


In for Repairs

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Series: Repairs [1]
Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: 69, Academy Era, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anal Sex, BDSM, Blow Jobs, Child Abuse, Cutting, Dark, Developing Relationship, Hand Job, Hurt/Comfort, If you only read one work by me, M/M, Masochism, Masturbation, POV First Person, POV Multiple, Past Tense, Scarification, Secrets, Self-Harm, Sexual Violence, Starfleet Academy, Violence, Wordcount: Over 50.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-29
Updated: 2010-10-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 23:22:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 22
Words: 66,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/130265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Jim Kirk is unstable and self-destructive, Leonard McCoy is withdrawn and wary, and the obstacles to surviving their first term at Starfleet Academy are not easy to overcome. A dark and brutal tale of the tangled borders between healing and hurting, where hard choices between emotions and ethics have far-reaching consequences; dealing with abuse and alcoholism, affection and neglect, piercings and bar fights, hot and cold sex, complicated questions of consent, and loyalty and love between people who aren't comfortable with either. A whole new spin on "I want my pain, I need my pain."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stealing the Keys

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning(s):** **MAY BE TRIGGERY, please read warnings carefully!** Some violent and bloody scenes, including assault and self-harm. Short descriptions of outright rape, other gradations of dubious consent. Discussions of child abuse. Cutting and scarification. Unhealthy pain play, evolving toward something better. (Masochism in a trusting BDSM context is a lovely thing. Pathological self-destructiveness isn't. This hurt/comfort story hits various parts of the continuum in between, but we don't mean to imply that they're the same thing.) Explicit sex. Oh, and lots and lots of profanity.  
>  **Beta(s):** We owe so many thanks to our wonderful betas for the last year, **graceandfire** and **lindmere** , and more recently **lalazee** and **wyntreaurora**. This would be a much weaker story without their input and we are grateful for the time they spent. Thanks also to **celli** and **tassosss** who joined us from the **ficfinishing** comm as alpha readers and cheerleaders and helped us get the damn thing finished!

#### Kirk

When it started, it was all about me being fucked up in the head. I wanted, I needed, I deserved, without ever really knowing _what_ I wanted, needed, deserved. Didn't care then where it came from, didn't care to connect it to anything else in my life. What did it matter?

I just knew that I was invisible in Riverside, drifting on my own after I tested out of their brain-dead schools, and when I provoked people — at the edges of the ball fields, behind the barbecue place, in the bars — I felt a little bit more alive, a little bit more real. I'd get into it with a whip-crack tongue and then with my fists, and have a minute or five of feeling the power to make something happen.

Then _something weird_ would happen with adrenaline or endorphins or whatever, and I'd get this twisted satisfaction out of the pain, out of having the power stripped away. A fight with just one guy was never enough; usually I'd manage to pull two or three of them into it so I was sure to get my clock cleaned, so I could savor that glazed calm I'd feel for a while after. I liked the taste of my own blood, and the look of my bruises in the mirror, and the increasingly weird-ass fantasies that would run through my head as I stiffly showered and jerked off the next morning.

Sooner or later, of course, the fantasies had to come true, and it was just as good and bad as I had hoped — a trucker the size of Des Moines hauled me out in the back alley, bounced me off walls and dumpster till I was dizzy and filthy, then yanked my jeans down to my thighs and did something any sane person would call rape. I felt wrong and twisted and dirty, but I wanted, I needed, I deserved, and there was no way in hell I was going to scream. The pain was intense, but the longer it went on the more that _something weird_ happened again: I had power over the pain, I could _outlast_ the fucker, and I could even fold his contempt into my fantasy and make it mine. I didn't come that first time, too much hurt, not enough foreplay in my head. But I was hard before he was done, and by the time I dragged myself home and fixed the worst of it, I was ready to relive it in my bed and brought myself off twice before morning.

Did I mention the fucked up in the head thing?

Fighting was something I'd always done, always ended up coming back to, but it wasn't long before sex got all tied up with it; layers of sick and rotten pleasure I laid over the violence that came with being me, made the violence my own.

I didn't go after the vicious bastards every time; backwards as my body might be, there were still days when all I wanted was a straight-up orgasm. I learned quick enough that people thought I was pretty, so I had my share of vanilla conquests too: top and bottom, boys and girls and whatever. Not that I didn't nudge a few ordinary lays to punch and spank and tie me up, but it was all crap, they treated it like a fucking game. Love taps and fleece-lined handcuffs didn't do a thing for me, I didn't want safewords and slow builds and cuddling after; I needed the danger and the disgust. I needed it real, got off hardest when it was real, and it kept coming back to some angry stranger in an alley or a crappy motel room or the back seat of someone's car.

The hard part was taking care of the consequences on my own. Modern medical technology's a wonderful thing — I had Frank's kick-ass medkit on call, so there was never a need for mom's asshole Starfleet doctors to fix up whatever was bruised, broken or torn, and of course to go running off to tell her every little humiliating detail. But walking or riding the bike home alone, that was sometimes a bitch.

That, and I knew it couldn't last forever. Maybe I'd finally push my luck too far and end up too broken or too dead to drag myself back from the edge, or maybe the law would finally get wise. If not, I'd eventually get too old and ugly and tired to get people going the way I could now. I already felt it some days, that loathsome urge to never get out of bed again — it was always enough to drive me out there looking to get my blood pumping again.

Thing is, Riverside's a small town. My class voted me " _most likely to end up dead in a ditch_ ," and since I didn't really want to trade that in for something nastier, I'd usually go trolling up in Iowa City or Cedar Rapids or Davenport, or look for outsiders to play my games with, in town.

Truckers were always reliable, and sometimes a random suit would be good for an anonymous cocksuck in a bathroom stall, but I loved having the shipyards nearby. There were almost always some Starfleet pricks coming and going, and they were _so damned easy_ to goad into a fight. Don't know if it had to do with keeping a stick up their ass the rest of the time, or if they really felt they were that much better than everyone else, but I could get them going in minutes. And every once in a while I'd run into one with that gleam in his eye, who meant exactly what I wanted him to mean when he said "let's teach this fuck a lesson."

That's why I went after Uhura that night. I'd already spotted the big meaty guys in cadet red, watching all the townies with a sneer. The blockheaded jerk was the real menace, but the bald one was their leader, and his nostrils flared when she strutted in; a dog after a bitch he had no chance in hell with. So I slid in next to her at the bar — made her pay attention, made her laugh, and right on cue got a chance to slap the guy on the shoulder and call him "cupcake", push all his buttons. Could have told you _to the second_ when he was going to swing — and then we were into it, _bang_ , nose crunched, _boom_ , cheek torn, yep, slammed around between fists. They grabbed my arms, and fuck, I was hard, and Blockhead had that look in his eye, and I was about to suggest we take it out back. But then the hot chick was gone, and I was on my back on the table with blood running into my sinuses when the fucking Admiral of the High Seas or whoever walked in and killed the scene dead.

The avid bloody tension was all gone, just slipped out of my fingers, left me hollow and angry — and the prick wanted to talk. He wanted to talk about my _dad_. It all just went over my head as I sat there tickling my balls under the table wishing he would either bend me over and fuck me proper, or go _the fuck_ away. And then he started going on about the Academy. Captain in eight years was total bullshit because I was a genuine certified fuck-up and even if they were too stupid to wash me out I'd still end up a deck-swab — or a cabin boy if I was lucky, _ha ha_ — on some backwater garbage scow.

But he thought I could do something _special_. What the fuck was he thinking, looking at me? He saw a _captain?_ Because I was my father's son? Fuck that. I was a brawler, a bruiser, a backwards sort of bully who picked on people bigger than me. I was a piece of meat, a boy-toy. I was in that fight to lose; that was my idea of a no-win scenario.

Why didn't Pike see any of that? All he knew about me was the day of my birth, and what he'd seen in the bar, and he wanted me to join Starfleet. Become an officer. Take command. Do something _important_. It was stupid. It was fucking insane. I had to take a drink of my beer to keep the acid out of my throat as he took my brush-off and stood.

 _I dare you to do better._ My stomach burned as he walked out, because I didn't want to admit that maybe I wanted it. Better than my sainted dad might not be an option, but maybe I wanted something better than the hole I'd dug for myself here — better than an empty farmhouse, better than empty bottles and sick empty fantasies.

I lifted the little _Kelvin_ salt shaker from the table. Did people really love the 'Fleet so much that they wanted even their tableware to be shaped like a dead starship, at a bar, during their downtime? Did I really think I could be a part of that? Did I think San Francisco, or the stars, were going to change who I was? I knew better than anybody that Starfleet had its share of what I wanted, what I needed, what I deserved; I had no illusions about the Academy being some pretty Never-Never Land.

But after a long miserable night roaming around Riverside on my bike, contemplating my options, it came down to the simple fact that Captain Pike wanted me. Or at least my aptitude scores. Insane or not, I was going to take him up on his fucking dare.

  


#### McCoy

I'd taken over the bathroom on the tiny Starfleet shuttle not only because it felt safer — no windows — but because of the irritatingly clichéd but nevertheless true fact that it was the one place a person could get some heavy thinking done. Assuming, of course, that he remained uninterrupted, which I sure as hell _did not_. No, a fierce little Starfleet officer dragged me back into the main cabin, insisting both that I needed a doctor _and_ that I take a seat — completely immune to the fact that I both _was_ a doctor and _had_ a Goddamn seat. The worst part of the whole thing wasn't her shouting at me — or me shouting back, hell, I'm good at that — nor the fact that we had the attention of the rest of the new recruits on the shuttle. No, the hell of it was that I was hung over in a way I hadn't been since I was sixteen and I didn't have a check on my runaway tongue and so announced to the whole damn vessel that I was afraid. Just what I needed. Excellent first impression, McCoy. Perfect.

Dignity shot to hell, I responded to "... I'll _make_ you sit down" with a snarled " _Fine_ " and threw myself into the only open seat I could see, between a cadet looking all spit-and-polished in his red uniform and another kid in blue jeans and a leather jacket who'd clearly crawled out of the same kind of hole I had to make the flight. The skin under his nose was raw and the lacerated contusion on his cheek spoke loudly of a brawl last night. I automatically glanced at his eyes, checking for concussion and, good God, were they blue. In fact, under the scrapes and bruises of his rough night, the kid was damned good looking, his pupils showed no sign of brain injury, and I realized I'd better say something before he realized I was staring.

"I may throw up on you."

_Well, McCoy, that was something._

"I think these things are pretty safe."

"Don't pander to me, kid," and my mouth was off and running away with me again, in a rant about the dangers of orbital travel that was about ninety percent bull because the last thing I wanted to do was think about the real dangers we were facing. The cadet to my other side slowly pulled closer to his seatmate, which was just fine with me, thank you very much. I'm sure I sounded mad, because I was, in both senses of the term — and my heart rate was somewhere between tachycardia and imminent infarction. Even the kid I was ranting at looked uncomfortable, uncertain. I decided about the only way to shut myself up was a little hair of the dog and I pulled out my flask; hating myself, the shuttle, Jocelyn, Pop, the whole damned situation. "Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence."

The kid's lips curled a little before he reminded me Starfleet operates in space.

Yeah, well, tell me something I _don't_ know. "I don't have anyplace left to go. The ex-wife took the whole damn planet in the divorce. All I've got left is my bones."

Hyperbole, just like the rest of the rant, but I finally got the flask up to my lips and took a steadying swallow before offering it to him. Seemed only polite, and kept me from having to explain further. Much to my surprise, he took it; his knuckles were more abraded than his face so he'd probably given as good as he'd got.

"Jim Kirk."

"McCoy. Leonard McCoy."

He offered me back my flask and I reached out to take it from him, drawing a breath to ask if he was any relation, when the shuttle took off with that gut-wrenching swoop they always seem to make. We humans react before we think — it's the way we're made — and I had his wrist hard in white-knuckled fingers for almost a full minute before I could make myself let go. I left behind red marks that were going to bruise; his eyes were a bit glazed with pain and his lips parted with a groan he wasn't vocalizing. I would have felt guilty if I hadn't been too busy feeling sick.

"If you ask me if I'm okay, I will punch you in the nose," I ground out, transferring both hands to the support strut between us.

He didn't even rub at the wrist, just tilted his head at me like I was the only person in the shuttle, eyes bright. "No, you won't."

"How d'you figure?"

He scratched over one of his eyebrows with a thumbnail and favored me with a grin. "You'd need a loose hand to hit me. But let's find out." He leaned over as much as the safety harness would allow and schooled his face into a completely unconvincing look of innocent concern. "Are you okay?"

My arms tensed up and I very much _wanted_ to hit him, but there was no way my hands were coming off the metal bar that wouldn't do a damn thing to save me if we ran into trouble. I settled for fixing him with a glare until the absurdity of the moment got to me and I snorted.

Jim sat back in his seat with a smirk. "Yeah, I didn't think so. You're all bark and no bite, Bones."

"Bones?"

He shrugged, glancing across the way at the pretty young cadet he'd been eyeballing before I sat down, and then back at me. "Nothing left but your bones, and you said you were a sawbones, so.... It just fits."

"As opposed to McCoy. Or Leonard."

"Or 'doctor'?" He shook his head. "No. Bones it is."

"Great," I said, unable to help rolling my eyes.

The kid laughed and his grin broadened enough that the split on his lower lip started to ooze again, and I wasn't about to tell him that I could think of a dozen worse nicknames he could have settled on.

"So, Bones," he said, stretching his legs out, "medical, then, or are you making a career change?"

"Not changing what I do," I said, aware that he was trying to keep me talking and pathetically grateful for the distraction, "just where I do it. You'll be command, of course."

"You've got my number already?" He winced, and brought his thumb up to touch his lip.

"On that point, yeah. Leave it alone. Your hands are filthy."

I was one to talk; I undoubtedly smelled of last night's bender and the shower I hadn't had a chance to take. Jim's hand still dropped away from his mouth.

"So you don't think there's a chance I might be headed for, say, sciences or xenolinguistics?" he asked, his gaze settling on the woman again.

"Kid," I said, "I think there's a chance you could be just about anything, including an admiral's son who's been out slumming with the townies and is on his way back to Frisco to get his butt well and truly chewed." I resolutely looked at the backs of his hands resting on the flask in his lap, cataloging his injuries instead of staring at my own white knuckles. I couldn't raise my head — too much risk of catching a glimpse of the infinite darkness outside the shuttle. I forced myself to draw deep breaths of recirculated air in and out through my nose; trying to get my galloping heart back under control and keep my nerves from running off with me. What a brilliant God-damned idea this had been.

"Jim."

"What?" I'd lost the thread of the conversation.

"Jim. Not kid."

I could hear the grimace and the firm determination in his voice.

"And that right there is why I figure you for command," I said. "Stubborn."

"You're about to pull that strut out of the floor, and you're calling _me_ stubborn?"

"Yeah, I am. If I get through two flight simulations without dropping out, _then_ you can call me stubborn."

  


σ


	2. Hitting the Gas

#### Kirk

The shuttle ride to San Francisco was more fun than I expected, and I gotta say, Bones McCoy was the first doctor I ever liked. Sure, it had something to do with the damn fine purple fingermarks he didn't mean to leave on my wrist, but it was more the feeling that we were a little bit alike; a little rougher around the edges than most of the plastic people filing through the orientation center. Unfortunately, he was sent off with the other doctor types while I got dumped in the general chum bucket.

Introduction to Starfleet: Lots of lines, one real honest-to-goodness paper to sign, a red uniform, a data padd full of endless schedules and rules and shit. A medical exam that was routine for everyone else and frustrating as hell for me, because the Academy doctor blithely erased every trace of the previous night's hard-won blood and bruises, not to mention the little gift Bones had left around my wrist. Bones had also given me one other very useful thing during our innocent chatter: some idea of the type of psych screening they used on new cadets. With a little prep time I did an excellent job of sounding like a bright-eyed and motivated reformed delinquent, issue-free and eager to be the best that I could be.

Pike came around to give me a nice paternal pep talk — I guess because I cut him off the first time around — but he got the stone-faced message that I didn't want his interference, his oversight, anything other than the foot in the door he'd already given me. And that I had more of Starfleet's shiny sorry-we-killed-your-dad money than I'd ever need.

The first week was crazy overwhelming, and I started to realize how big a thing I'd gotten myself into: exhilarating and terrifying at the same time, like pressing the accelerator to the floor with no idea where you're going next.

Because of my late enrollment, the bureaucracy shoved me into a handful of generic entry-level classes, and even for those the reading was insane — not difficult, just fucktons of it; I couldn't just speed through it in the first few days like I was used to. Physical training wasn't hard either, exactly, but not mouthing off to the drill instructor was. I dodged my advisor meeting, where I was supposed to start planning whether to declare for Operations, or Sciences, or Command Fucking Gold. My roommate was a useless twit with a collection of houseplants and a whiny voice, who actually seemed scared of me half the time. And I got a dozen demerits in the first month, going straight to Pike's desk I was sure, before I learned how to keep half a rein on my tongue, keep my hands to myself, and not lash out at every imagined and not-so-imagined insult.

I also learned one hard fucking lesson: the Academy was a closed world, worse than Riverside. Every person I interacted with here was someone I was likely to be taking classes with, doing simulations with, sharing a mess with, and maybe risking my life with, for the foreseeable future. I couldn't afford to treat everyone like a stranger — every asshole I taunted and every pretty face I fucked was gonna keep on crossing paths with me over and over and over again, if I stuck with this.

 _Fuck_.

Thank god for the city.

They didn't make it easy for first-quarter cadets to escape the nursery — filled your time end-to-end with classes and labs and papers and mandatory social crap — but some things were more important to me than sleep. It wasn't long before I was regularly snaking my way out on the town to blow off the gnawing tension of trying to twist myself to fit this new life.

I tried to be halfway normal at first, I really did. A few beers here and there, in a laughably fake dive-bar on the fringe of the college quarter; maybe a full-on bender on a Friday night or two in some glossy lounge downtown, when I had time to get my act together again before classes. And I took a few long rides on a rented bike, out away from the Academy and the city, away from the constant press of noise and faces and curious questions. But I still had that ugly thing under my skin that made it so hard to back down from a fight, that craved the release that came with pain and bruises. I could only swallow it back for so long, and paying a professional to paddle me black and blue was no more satisfying than it had ever been. I only itched harder for the real thing.

I finally gave in the night I ran into the Blockhead out on the town. His contemptuous gaze and hackle-raising aura took me right back to where Pike had interrupted us at the bar in Riverside, and it was a grim sort of relief to bellow and snarl and let fists fly at last, blood running hot in my veins. He dragged me outside into a dark alley, and we danced until I crashed down hard on hands and knees and he came down with me. Taking his cock brought back that hollow flying feeling for the first time since Iowa, and I came onto the wet asphalt while he was still going at it. "Sick fuck," he said, and he was right — I gritted my teeth and stared unseeing at the pavement and knew I didn't give a shit anymore.

I hadn't changed at all. The miserable highs and soothing lows were still exactly what I wanted, needed, deserved, and the joyride was just that — a reckless impulse with a foregone conclusion. After that night I stopped pretending to myself, just started looking for ways to keep it hidden, make it last as long as I could.

I'd strip off everything Starfleet before I went out so none of it got back to Pike. I'd take the Muni deeper in or farther afield, looking for the dirt and darkness that had to cling to the underside of such a big bright city. I'd always find it somewhere, far from the tourists and the college kids, and then I'd order a drink and size up my targets. I gotta say, I have a serious talent for picking out the meanest fuck in a crowd; too bad there's no 'Fleet merit badge for that one.

I'd use my patented patting-him-on-the-cheek trick, or hustle or get hustled at pool or poker, whatever it took to get someone up in my face. The end was always the same, blood or sex or both.

My whey-faced roommate taught me how to hack the entry logs to make it look like I was keeping curfew, as long as the door read my thumbprint before 0600. There was usually plenty of time to get back, tap my new black market medkit to hide the worst of the damage, and sleep an hour or two before class. If it occasionally made me a little cranky the next day, I still usually managed to run rings around the other cadets in discussion sections.

Things felt a little easier to handle with the old familiar patterns in place; much easier to fool everyone else than it had been to fool myself. As long as I kept in mind that it was just a game, school was even fun. The first flight sim was a rush; a crazy ride designed to see if you could keep your head and accomplish your assigned task with things tumbling and twirling around you. I loved it. I wondered if Doctor Bones had taken the same one, and if it had run him out of town. I never saw him around campus. No one else made much of an impression on me; for all that I needled or flirted with every faceless uniform I met, I felt comfortably invisible again.

I tried not to go out too often — wouldn't go out at all the night before a test — but the itch never really went away. I couldn't stop it. I just tried never to go back to the same bar twice.

One wretched place, the guy who blacked my eye didn't even bother taking me outside, just bent me over a barstool right in the middle of the crowd. I got to listen to jeers and whistles with my head hanging down, pain pounding through me, tingling all over, and oh fuck, that memory kept me going through my first midterms — made for a very fast and satisfying jerk-off so I could get back to stuffing history and physics into my head.

And yeah, I actually studied, and yeah, I actually cared about passing. So what? It felt like bluffing a pot on an off-suit pocket deuce-trey, to see the looks on people's faces when they realized I'd aced everything.

And Uhura turned me down but I dragged a dozen other brilliant-like-me cocksuckers into their civvies and out on the town to celebrate, and we did it right, laughed and cussed and got drunk like you have never seen before, rounds of drinks from five solar systems and loud music from ten different decades and a green girl wrapped around a pole but it wasn't real and it wasn't enough, it was never fucking enough and so I found myself lurching off to the bathroom and then right on out the back door into the rain and a block, two blocks, six steep and slippery blocks away before I figured I was safe from the 'Fleet and I stumbled into a black pit lined with dirty neon, wiped the wet off my face, and demanded to know who wanted to fuck with me.

  


#### McCoy

Friday nights, I pulled volunteer shifts at St. Francis Hospital in downtown San Francisco. Like all emergency rooms, the chaos usually came in waves. That particular Friday, however, we'd had a steady stream of patients: both Starfleet cadets and the local U students were cutting loose after midterms. Lacerations, overdoses, and alcohol poisoning were the popular choices, but I also helped an Andorian through one of the worst cases of food poisoning I'd seen in my career, and two tiny babes whose daddy had a rough hand.

Some folk you could hate without ever knowing them.

It was some time after one in the morning and I had just pulled the curtain on the two girls and their relieved mother when the Samoan nurse Tanielu (who'd given me a piece of his mind when I'd called the city "Frisco" on my first night) grabbed my elbow.

"Never rains but it pours," I muttered, following him down the hall in quick time, through the bland beige light that clung to everything in the emergency room.

"Funny you should say that," he answered, catching the gurney the parameds were wheeling in. Cold air blew in with them, and I caught a glimpse of water sheeting down outside beyond the portico, but focused instead on the face in front of me, vaguely familiar and absolutely covered in blood.

"How much of this is his?" I demanded, fingers at the guy's throat, feeling a weak but regular pulse.

"Most of it — scalp cut there. Hooker tripped on him coming out the back door of a dive on lower Turk...." I listened with trained ears to the rest of the details the paramed rattled off, while Tanielu ran the medical tricorder.

I could see where his hairline had made the acquaintance of some hard object, and grabbed a light to check his pupils. The darkness contracted, the irises were a blue I'd seen before, and the reason he looked familiar snapped into place. Dammit, smart kids who try to be nice to assholes like me should not end up in the ER. Jim moaned and coughed up a little more blood; we transferred him on to a proper biobed, and another nurse cut him out of his soaked and grimy clothes, down to his boxer shorts.

I waved off the parameds, who rattled the curtain closed as they left, and looked expectantly at Tan.

"Fractured skull," he said, starting at the top, while I checked the depth of the cut. "No bleeding in the brain, minimal swelling."

_Good._

"Broken nose, hairline fracture to the left cheekbone, dislocated right shoulder, ribs 7 and 8 cracked on the left, 8, 9 and 10 broken on the right. Corresponding minor pulmonary laceration, signs of trauma to the anus and rectum, probable rape. Multiple minor lacerations and contusions."

"That it?" God _damn_ , I hated people.

His eyes ran down the readout again. "Dislocated right fifth digit. Blood alcohol 0.15."

The bed started providing its own readings, confirming my hands-on assessment. I was sure the kid's skull would be just fine — have to be thick as hell to be down in the Tenderloin on his own anyway. The pressing issue was taking care of the laceration in his lung, and his ribs. Neither were going to be fatal, but the less fluid he aspirated the better he'd heal. I'd set wondering about probable rape aside for later.

I figured the imp of the perverse had half the night off, because Jim didn't wake up until we'd repaired his lung, replaced his lost blood, set the broken ribs, and applied the osteogenerator. But he came back on duty when I was in the process of setting Jim's shoulder: those brilliant blue eyes slid open just a moment too soon, hazy focus drifting up towards the ceiling tiles.

"Bad time to come to, Jim. This is going to hurt," I said, and Tan pushed and I pulled and I expected Jim to moan or whimper, but he just grunted as the head slipped back into the glenoid cavity. It was barbaric as hell, that sort of manual manipulation, but still the best way we knew to fix a dislocated joint. Jim's eyes were glazed, although I wasn't sure if I should be attributing that to the pain, the hit he'd taken to the head, or the plain and simple fact that he was still drunk off his ass.

"One more to go," I said, reaching for his hand. He nodded, and I set the finger. For just a moment I thought I saw him grin, but I told myself it had to be a grimace, given the way he was breathing rough through clenched teeth.

We heard the emergency doors crashing open again. "Go on," I told Tan. "I've got this one," and he was off at a trot. I pulled the curtain closed again behind him and turned back to the bed and equipment cart.

"Bones."

I almost didn't hear it, almost didn't respond to a nickname I'd only heard used once, by one person. This person. I looked down at his battered face, pinched and pale in the overhead light.

"Where'm I....?" His voice was weak, nasal, his nose filled with bent cartilage and clotted blood.

"Saint Francis Hospital," I said, setting a second regenerator to work mending the strained ligaments in his shoulder.

He relaxed, marginally. "You drop out?"

"No."

"Why..." his breath came short. His eyes were fever-bright, though the bed's temp readouts sat at dead normal. Took me a tick to realize what he was asking.

"Because part of our coursework is volunteer hours, I didn't see why a fully trained surgeon should waste his time at the Academy clinic, and I can't get cleared to work the 'Fleet hospital yet."

St. Franks was chronically understaffed, so with the nurses busy elsewhere, I reached for a sterile wipe; took the back of his head in my hand, and started cleaning blood off his face to get a better look at the damage — my fingers, as always, gentler than my mood.

"Don't...." he started, and I paused, but his eyes were on some other planet. I don't think he even felt the wipe. "Don't report this."

"Jim...."

"I know, I know, can't erase a record. Whatever. But you can," and he coughed, and I set my hand over the silver osteogenerator so he didn't shake it loose, so I could brace the ribcage a little for him. "Make me a John Doe, or something? Gotta be some victim protection thing, right?"

What the hell was going on in his head?

"Your call, Jim. But we have some really good counselors—"

" _No._ No counselors. No cops." There it was again, that hidden steel I'd gotten a glimpse of beneath his glibness in the shuttle. Stubborn ass. "Don't report this."

I grunted. "You're a man grown, and you weren't shot nor stabbed, so I'm not obliged to report anything, regardless what I think you _should_ do."

Only thing was, I wasn't so sure _what_ I thought he should do. I wasn't even sure, watching him struggle to stay alert, that beating or rape was the the worst of what was going on with him. He was desperate in some way that had nothing to do with being victimized. And yeah, I knew I couldn't generalize patient response, particularly over something so personal. But Jim wasn't in denial. I'd seen plenty of that over the years, and he clearly wasn't repressing anything; this was something... else.

  


σ


	3. Taking the Call

#### Kirk

"Should," I echoed what Bones had said, emptily. It rattled something in my dazed and drunken mind. "I should get back."

My head hurt like a motherfucker. Getting back was important. Getting back before dawn. I was trying to keep my thoughts focused on that, but the reasons kept drifting out of reach. Bones was here. That was weird, seeing Bones here, he'd been in my dreams a couple of times. Grumpy Bones. Looked like he wasn't sleeping enough. Couldn't figure out if his eyes were green or brown. Or both. I liked his eyebrows. But there was something.... I had to get back to the dorm. Before dawn.

I tried to heave myself up, but then there was this insanely strong hand on my collarbone. I squeezed my eyes closed.

"Dammit, kid!"

"Not your fucking kid!" I barked automatically, bracing against the hand holding me down. But my nose was clogged and barking was bad and I was coughing again hard. I couldn't get a deep enough breath, and I didn't know what I was bracing for. The hypo took me by surprise and then I felt heavy all over and the pain was receding and I didn't want to let it go because I needed it; I needed to stay awake, I needed to get back and my eyes opened wide.

"Bones!" I said, and I sounded panicked and stupid in my own ears.

"Easy, Jim. You need to stay still until your ribs are mended." He glanced at something above my head. "Which will be another ten minutes or so."

" _Don't knock me out._ "

"I just gave you a muscle relaxant, to make you lie still. Like any _sane_ person with broken ribs would do." He wasn't even looking at me, just reaching for some other shiny bit of equipment. _Dawn soon_ , I thought helplessly, but I could hardly move. It took a mountain of effort just to make my lips shape words.

"Nothing sane about me," I managed to drawl. Or maybe drool.

"I noticed," he growled, lifting his hands to my face. I felt the familiar tingle of mending cartilage and skin as his tools put my nose back into its usual shape; had to resist the urge to take a deep breath when my nasal passages opened up. He was looking in my eyes again, his eyebrows slanting fiercely. I wanted to laugh. "Why don't you want to be knocked out?"

"I have to...." Green, his eyes were definitely green. "I have to get back." Until he frowned. Then they were brown. Very unfair, changing all the time like that.

"To the Academy?" His gentle fingers pressed the edges of the cut on my scalp together.

"The dorm. Before 0600. Or I can't fix the logs. And the...." I blanked out for a sec and pain seared right through the drugs and down my spine and into my balls and my eyes were watering and the fucking adrenaline was hitting everything and the bed made all sorts of pingy noises. I had the sudden urge to pull him down for a hard, angry kiss.

But he was moving fast, doing something to make the pain vanish, babbling all the while. "Jesus, Jim, I'm sorry, the supratrochlear nerve must have..."

I stared at the ceiling, listening to him mutter at himself as he worked, feeling like I'd been hit all over with something like the afterburn of a bright light. I couldn't speak. Every goddamn muscle in my body was limp except for my cock, stretching my underwear. Did his eyes flick down? I imagined that they did.

"Jim? Jim, can you hear me?" A penlight flashed in my left eye, then my right.

I struggled to answer, managed a grunt.

"I'm sorry. Hang in there for another ten minutes, let me finish fixing you up, then we can talk about what to do next. By all rights you oughtta stay here till morning but — " and he set a nice warm hand on my chest again. "But — hang on. I'll get you home, but you're to spend tomorrow in bed, is that clear?"

Oh, I had all sorts of answers to that one, in my head, but I didn't get a chance to use any of them before he had turned back to fixing my aching skull. I let my eyes drift closed, listening to him work, helpless under his hands, trying to decide whether or not I wanted the erection to go away before he turned his attention to my medically compromised ass.

Next thing I knew he was removing the regenerators. I could breathe a lot easier, and my thoughts were clearer. The pain was gone. I must have made some noise, because he said "Easy, Jim..." again in that soft Southern accent. "You fell asleep, but it's only been about ten minutes, like I promised. Feeling better?"

"Yeah." Thanks, I ought to say. Meant to say. But I didn't think he'd understand the bitterness.

"Can you roll over on your side for me?"

 _Yes sir, I can do that, sir._ Hell of a fucking time to start having fantasies about my doctor, when I was almost naked on his table and his long gentle fingers were easing the shorts down over the bruises. Didn't he have a fucking tricorder, or something? He didn't actually have to look at my bare ass with his eyes, see blood and semen clotted there. Maybe he just wanted to. Maybe Bones would get off on it, later in his bed, imagining what they'd done to me, maybe wanting to do it himself.

 _Sick and weird_ , my fantasy said, _sick and weird_. The doctor's fingers were too soft and sensitive, I had to imagine some lurid expression on his face as he examined me. I thought back on his hands forcing my shoulder into place, that grotesque wash of pain and satisfaction, tried to fold it in with all my other sick shit. _This body loves bruises_ , I thought at him loudly. _You can tell, can't you?_  But all I heard was the impersonal hum of his regenerator as he mended the abraded tissue.

  


#### McCoy

The scanner and the biobed told me plenty, but I preferred to see what was going on with my own eyes as much as possible, rather than relying on machines telling me how to treat my patient. Machines don't _feel_ ; don't have instinct to tell them when _something's out of place_ — don't know how to judge when an aberrant erection ought to be sympathetically ignored. They report the bare facts of the matter as well as they're programmed, but lines of code can't process like the human brain.

"I'm done here, Jim. But I still think you should stay." I said, turning away and savagely flinging a blood-stained wipe into the biohazard bin. "For one thing, I could go back to the dorms and get you some clothes."

He didn't respond. I looked up at the clock when I saw my shift relief going by past the curtain, looking regal and somehow undisturbed by the rain. Wouldn't last, I knew.

"Will you stay in the bed, or do I have to dose you again?" I looked back at Jim; he'd pulled his shorts back up but was otherwise lying distressingly still.

_Dammit, Jim, answer me. I know you're still awake._

Of course, what I should have done was let him fall to sleep and see that he got the care he needed overnight. Maybe get him a psych eval in the morning. But he was so damn determined, so damn contradictory in his responses, and I couldn't bring myself to force him into a system he didn't want to be in. I shook my head. Definitely command material; I'd met him all of twice and already I was worrying and going against my better judgment for him.

"Jim," I said, sharply, "I can't have you wandering off in nothing but your skivvies. So you have to _tell me_ that you'll listen to me and stay in the damn bed."

He hunched his shoulders in just a little, finally.

"Yes, sir," he said in a soft, flat tone that shouldn't have been complex enough to carry sarcasm and bitterness and defeat all at the same time.

"If I can't call you kid, you can't call me sir," I said quietly, rubbing my stubbled chin with the heel of my hand. I slipped out of the room and down the hall to the med team's lockers. I told my brain that it could work on sorting the puzzle pieces that were Jim and my reaction to him later; right now we had to solve the problem of getting back to the Academy.

Going back to the Academy by myself for Jim's clothes was out of the question. I had no idea which dorm he was in and besides, the round trip would take too long — I didn't think he'd stay put for it. I managed to sweet-talk a tallish nurse into loaning me his extra set of scrubs, then quickly changed back into my own street clothes. Jim wasn't so broad in the shoulders that he couldn't wear my jacket, I thought; I hated the wet, but I hadn't just been lying in a hospital bed. I could stand it.

Jim was more than half asleep when I got back to him; I reluctantly set my hand on his shoulder and said his name. He jerked awake, opened bleary eyes to stare at me, and I handed over the jacket, the clothing and his boots.

"You need anything for pain?" I asked, turning to the equipment cart to sign out a few extra meds for my kit.

 _Nothing you can give me for this pain is going to be enough, boy._ Pop's voice, angry and raw and loud enough in the back of my head that it almost drowned out Jim's soft, toneless "No," and what the hell? I snapped the kit closed, shoving aside unwanted memories of my father's last bitter days.

When I looked back, Jim was slipping on my brown bomber jacket like it had always belonged to him.

"Come on, then."

I escorted Jim out to the desk and signed the chart, grumbling about idiots who didn't have sense enough to stay in bed. And not entirely for the intake nurse's benefit. Stupid. This was stupid.

Outside, the portico was full of ambulances and we had to walk through the thundering rain to reach the hovercab waiting farther up the sidewalk. Jim looked startled when I got in after him and punched in the coordinates for the big dorm tower.

I pushed cold wet hair back off my forehead and glowered at him. "You didn't think I was going to send you home all by your lonesome, did you?"

"Bones..." he said quietly, then didn't seem to know how to continue. It was a question that answered itself anyway.

"You need medical supervision for the next six hours. My shift's done, I'm going back to the Academy anyway, and I'm not taking no for an answer."

He looked intently at me; blue eyes wary and calculating, no longer vague and lost despite the exhaustion that lingered beneath them.

"More volunteer hours?" he said, with a slightly mocking tilt to his head.

"Keeping to my Oath," I growled. "You shouldn't be upright at all."

He shrugged and leaned his head against the window, looking out at the passing street lights, or maybe at their twisted reflections in the runnels of rain on the glass. His profile was so strong, but the shifting light alternately hid and highlighted the faint pits and scars of naturally-healed injuries too old to be easily fixed.

We didn't talk on the short ride back to the Academy grounds. Jim obviously didn't want to, and I was busy trying to keep my muscles relaxed under my wet shirt so I didn't start shivering. I still wasn't sure how to broach any of the questions bouncing around the inside of my head. We were entering the main campus drive when some of the pieces finally fell into place.

  


σ


	4. Cranking the Music

#### Kirk

Bones was quiet on the ride, which suited me fine — hadn't found the things I usually went looking for, but I was wrung out anyway, empty of words and will for the time being. He was still grumpy, I figured; I would be too, if I was escorting some stupid stubborn patient home at three in the fucking morning. But then, out of the blue, he said, "So how often do you go out drinking and picking fights, anyway?"

My stomach twisted and I shot him a sharp look, pulling myself back to the present. He shrugged. "Tonight wasn't the first time your nose has been broken, Jim, and frankly whoever repaired it for you before ought to lose their license."

Sherlock fuckin' Bones, man. Just what I needed at the ass end of the night. I scrubbed at the back of my head, trying to get my brain into gear, but there wasn't a lie I could think of that his scanners weren't going to see through if he looked deeply enough. Different tack, then.

"Drinking? _Me?_ " I said with a grin. He wasn't buying the twinkle, just looking at me with lips twisted and eyebrow raised. "All right, I admit it, I party a little too hard. And I do get into fights sometimes. But I'm usually smarter about the odds — it's not usually six against one."

" _Six_? You are out of your mind."

I snorted.

"Like I said, it wasn't exactly part of the plan." I had screwed up, I'd chased my fucking itch when I was totally hammered, not in control at all. Ended up worse than a bath-house towel: used until filthy, crumpled up, tossed aside. Now that I was more awake I was coldly, nauseatingly aware of how lucky I was not to be dead; now I just had to keep him from digging too far and getting the psych morons on my case.

"Just how stupid d'you think I am?" His Georgia drawl was getting stronger. "Six-on-one wasn't part of the plan, fine. I'm guessin' that landing in the hospital _also_ wasn't part of the plan, based on how hot you are to get back on campus. What's the rush, anyway? You're hardly gonna be the only cadet out late after midterms."

"Don't wanna draw attention to myself, okay?"

His eyebrows contorted; I shook my head and grinned again, acknowledging how fucking absurd that sounded coming from me. "Brass has enough reasons to want me gone. Don't need to be handing them a new one on a platter. All I want to do now is get back to my bed and pretend it never happened."

"Do you, now." Still watching me like I was some idiot primate he was studying.

No, actually, the last thing I wanted to do was forget. I wanted to lie down with my dick in my fist and remember as much of the night as I could; twist it around into some better-shaped fantasy. Fit my doctor into it somewhere, and finally get some gratification for the night — but I wasn't about to say so to him. I leaned my head back against the seat, suddenly realizing that "medical supervision" might mean he planned to stay in the dorm with me. Fucking hell, I didn't want him to stay and babysit me. Did I? At least he didn't realize I'd never really answered any of his questions.

The cab pulled up alongside the tower. At some point during the drive the rain had changed into a fine mist and — even though I'd gotten used to November in San Francisco being mild as springtime anywhere else — when Bones opened the door, it felt like a goddamn freezer.

"I'm going to regret asking this, but just what _was_ the plan?" he asked through gritted teeth. I climbed out gingerly onto the curb. Nothing hurt anymore, exactly, but I still didn't feel quite steady on my feet. The mist was prickling through the thin scrubs and I pulled the zipper on the jacket up a little tighter.

"There wasn't one, Bones." I avoided his eyes and headed for the door, walking as fast as I could manage to get out of the cold. He took a couple of jogging steps to catch up with me. "I passed all my midterms and I wanted to celebrate. That's all. I got drunk, I got lost, and I learned my fucking lesson."

"Right."

I grabbed the ice-cold door handle. "Motherfuck!" I grunted and let go, but propped the door open with my foot long enough for Bones to dart through into the lobby. I suddenly realized he wasn't wearing a jacket, just a button-down shirt that was sticking damply to his torso, gooseflesh showing wherever there was skin. And, stupidly late, I realized the loaner jacket I was wearing had to belong to him. The door snicked closed and I unzipped and shrugged out of it in one motion, whipping it around his shoulders before his shivering got worse.

"Come on," I said, taking his elbow and pulling until he was on the lift with me, then tried rubbing his arms through the sides of the jacket while we got whisked almost silently up to my floor.

"Stop that."

I let his arms go. "You didn't have to come out in the rain with me, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Only I had to go out in the rain anyway, and you still would have had the jacket."

I led him down the hall, where my thumbprint opened the door and logged me in with plenty of time to spare. I squinted into the darkness, then beckoned him inside. I didn't feel quite so tired anymore.

"Computer, lights. And heat, up two percent. You didn't have to give me the jacket, either." The roomie was gone, thankfully; his bed neatly made and empty. Mine....uh, not so neat. I pushed clothes and notes off behind the bed, kicking the worst of the dirty underwear out of sight as I went. "Um...."

I decided a grin and a shrug had to be enough of an apology for post-midterm chaos.

"The bed's there. You just cleaned it off," he pointed out, and although his tone was still gruff his eyes were soft and green. "Scrubs work as well as anything for pajamas, and I don't want to know if wearin' somethin' to bed is unusual for you."

"Okay, okay, bed in a few. But you need to get warm first. Hey," I said, bright idea striking. I pulled open the cabinet over the desk. "Tequila, Scotch, or green brandy?" I was betting McCoy was a Scotch man, but he just dropped his kit next to the desk, licked his lips, then shook his head.

"Bed _now_ , Jim. I'm warming up just fine on my own."

I pulled the ribboned Scotch off of the shelf anyway, hefting it in my hand for a sec. I hadn't thought I'd ever open this bottle, but I really wanted, suddenly, to sit down and share it with him. I wanted to see what he was like a little loosened up, laughing instead of scowling. But his arms were folded sternly across his chest.

"I _will_ sedate you if I have to. I'd rather not."

I sighed, set the bottle down on the desk, then dropped heavily on the end of the bed and stripped my boots off, chewing the corner of my lip.

I stretched out on my side, pulling the pillow up against chin and chest like I always did, then hooked the blanket up over me. "You know," I said softly, "you can crash here. Ernie's suitcase is gone, he won't be back tonight."

He sighed.

"I didn't figure you'd actually want me here babysitting, but since you're offering...think I'll take you up on that. One bed around here's same as any other, and his is closer."

I nodded, and thought about watching him get ready for bed, and then I was gone.

  


#### McCoy

I woke up disoriented, feeling like I hadn't got near enough sleep. Something soft was brushing at my forehead.

"Dammit, Cat, get off the bed," I muttered, reaching up to catch the infuriating creature around the ribcage and scoot him off onto the floor.

I came up with a handful of cold leaves.

"What the _hell_?"

I was halfway out of the bed before my brain finally kicked in and reminded me where I was and whose room I was in — which didn't do much to settle the adrenaline rush. The early sun washed the room with pale white light.

I rubbed what little sleep I'd gotten out of my eyes and glanced over at Jim's bed. Too much to hope I hadn't disturbed him; he was watching me with his rumpled pillow tucked up against his chest; his smile broad and white, as if the evening's torments had never happened. I remembered the way he'd pushed pain and exhaustion aside last night too, as if my being cold had been only thing that mattered to him.

"What the hell is _that_?" I gestured at the lavender-leaved plant that had been...I don't know, _fronding_ me, and was still searching the pillow. Probably feeling the body heat I'd left behind.

"I couldn't tell you. Ernie collects them. He gets really angry if you piss in them."

"Too much nitrogen in human urine for most plants, and that's vile, Jim." I got the rest of the way out of bed and stretched; I'd slept in my clothes and almost certainly looked a fright — always did in the morning. "How's your ...." I caught a glimpse of the unopened bottle on the desk, the bottle of _Glenmorangie_ on the desk, and completely lost my train of thought. The hell was Jim doing with that kind of premium liquor in his cabinet?

"My everything is doing just fine, thanks." He had his head propped up on one elbow now, sky-bright eyes watching me with interest.

I shook my head and looked back at him. "Glad to hear it. That's not permission to get up and go gallivanting around campus, mind. But I will say you have excellent taste for a guy who tried to substitute a good portion of cheap alcohol for blood last night. Where'd you come up with _that_?"

He blinked, and glanced at the bottle; then his eyelids slid down like clouds over the sun. "Birthday present," he mumbled.

"I want your friends," I said, sincerely. I picked the medkit off the floor beneath his desk and came over to the bed. "Lie back so I can make sure you're feeling as well as you say." Obediently, he rolled onto his back.

Only it wasn't my kit; the cover was new, without scuffs, and when I opened it none of the handful of vials I'd borrowed the night before were inside. It certainly had everything else I might need, and I frowned at it, stupidly, then pulled out the lone regenerator and turned it in my fingers.

"Uh, that's mine, actually."

I looked up at Jim, and searched his white face for God only knows what because I sure as hell didn't. More pieces were falling into place; some that I remembered from the night before, some that were only just presenting themselves. Need and lies. Pain and arousal. Self-destruction and despair. All wrapped up in the sort of brilliance that, if he could harness it, anyone would willingly follow to hell and back. But that bright flame was guttering even as I watched him watching me fit the pieces into a frightening whole.

"If I hook that up to my padd, what's the history going to show me?"

"Don't." The voice was very firm, very strained, and very small. He broke the gaze between us, looked up past the ceiling.

"Jim?"

He didn't respond. I didn't need to be told we were going somewhere very dark and strange.

Without further comment, I stowed the regenerator in its place. Pulled out the tricorder I'd been looking for and ran the hand scanner over his body very slowly. This time the readout was in my hands, not those of some hurried nurse, and I paid attention not only to what _was_ , but those places where something _had been_. Tiny badly-mended fractures, mostly, layers of them; soft tissue may forget but the bones remember forever.

I put the instrument away with deliberate care, then got up and put his kit back where I'd found it; mine still sat a foot away, next to the desk instead of under it. I sat down in the chair and turned my attention back to Jim. He had lifted a forearm up to cover his eyes, and his belly rose and fell with the uneven raggedness of nausea.

"So," I ventured. "You're the one whose license I need to get revoked."

Three, four breaths passed.

"I guess so," Jim's small voice said.

I wasn't feeling all that steady myself; my chest had gone tight and my own guts were roiling. Good thing I had questions to fall back on, stupid as they were.

"Jim, you're not protecting someone else?" But of course he wasn't; nobody trying to hurt him now except himself. I knew that even before he laughed at me, awful and sharp, hard with old pain and secrets long-kept. I sat back in the chair and put my hands over my face and thought.

 _You keep telling me you're a_ doctor _, boy. You know what this suffering is like. You've seen it before. Sometimes only a doctor can give a body what he really needs, and keep his damn mouth shut._

"All right," I said tightly, shoving the intrusive memories of Pop aside. If Jim had some dark need to seek out pain — something so strong he'd learned enough to heal himself — it wasn't something I could fix by telling him what a bad idea it was. Not when he was already starting to draw back into his protective shell. I remembered that cynical, wary look he'd given me in the cab, the way he'd been taken aback at the fact that I _wasn't_ turning him out alone in the dark.

I leaned forward, setting my elbows on my thighs and folding my hands together. "All right, Jim. This is how this is going to work for now. I can't stop you doing what you're going to do. But if you need fixing up, after, you don't do it yourself. You come find me."

The arm came down off his face, and his gaze sought mine. His eyes were wide; brittle blue crystal around a deep pit of black.

"You're...not going to tell them."

I should have told someone. I should have insisted on having his psych evaluation re-done. Wouldn't have known how this bitter self-destructive streak had gotten by the eval in the first place, if I hadn't lied my way through my own. But he'd damn near re-broken his own ribs last night to dodge another demerit and I _knew_ , sure as I knew my own name, that losing Starfleet would be the end of him.

"I'll keep your secret, Jim, so long as you come to me when you need mending. I'd rather you found some other way to get whatever it is you're after, but yeah. I'm not telling anyone."

He sat up slowly, a kind of bewildered wonder trying to crawl out from beneath his frown. He shook his head, lips parting helplessly. Finally he pushed sharply up off the bed, strode towards the desk, and shoved the bottle of Scotch into my hands. He folded my fingers around it and squeezed them with his own.

I didn't want the liquor and I didn't want his warm hands on mine; but there was a fragile shadow of trust in his eyes and there was no way on God's green earth I was going to watch that break now. Mouth dry, I nodded once. He released the bottle, then retreated to the edge of the bed.

The ethical quicksand I was in was getting deeper by the second; he was still my patient and I could rationalize a certain amount of confidentiality, but there were much larger issues looming over us. Fitness. Loyalty. His career, and what this might mean to it. My career, the duties I'd be taking on as Medical Officer.

None of it mattered just then. I held his gaze. Whatever dark and strange place Jim was in, I was right there with him.

God help me.

  


σ


	5. Waving out the Window

#### Kirk

Probably just as well that Bones knocked me out for the rest of Saturday. I don't know what we'd have said to each other, with everything still sort of fucked up and raw on the surface, where words don't really cut it.

I woke up in the late afternoon, fighting off dreams of being dragged backwards through storm-whipped waves, blind and frantic, throat full of salt water. I shoved myself up out of the blankets, pressed my palms to my forehead and raked fingernails across my scalp with a groan — only to look up and find the asshole roommate was back and wrinkling his nose in disgust at my presumed hangover. I stared blackly at him, wondering what was the worst thing _he'd_ been through the night before.

But the anger helped to bury things that didn't need thinking about, and I got up and did some sit ups and push ups to get my heart pumping and my brain focused on the present. By the time I was done exercising I was ready for a new problem to tackle.

The doctor and the Scotch were gone, and my message queue held a brief, personality-free note that gave me a comm code and a dorm number for "McCoy, Leonard H." It took me less than a minute to pull up his sparse public student file, and only a few more, with a few of the tricks I'd learned from Ernie, to get his class schedule. Looked like Bones spent pretty much all day over in biosciences, which explained why I hadn't run into him on campus before.

Armed with his basic info, I took my padd out into the afternoon sun, stretched out on the soft, tame grass on the quad, and got busy. Took a fair bit of time and patience to find the bits and stitch them into anything coherent, but a deeply absorbing puzzle was just what I wanted. "H." turned out to be "Horatio", which made me grin — finally, someone else with a middle name as stupidly story-laden as my own. He was from small-town Georgia. I knew he'd been married, and a little creative digging turned up the name Jocelyn Darnell, still living in Peachtree in a _very_ nice house. And hey, maybe I was partial to his side already, but that read like "bitch" to me, whether it was the house he'd walked away from or one she'd bought with his money.

And it looked like he was pretty fucking brilliant too. I laughed a little; scattering the cloud of tiny grass-gnats that were starting to gather as the falling sun stretched long shadows around me. Bones had graduated high school early — followed his dad into medicine, but ditched the family to go away to college in Mississippi. Had apparently ripped his way through his schooling: honors up the ying yang, groundbreaking research in several areas. He'd become a fully licensed doctor a lot younger than I'd have guessed. He did surgery and emergency medicine at several different hospitals, but it looked like he'd never had a private practice of his own; his dad's practice had been taken off the state registry just a few weeks after the date on his obituary. The divorce had been finalized a few months after that.

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the fading orange sky, scratching at the rough stubble on my throat. The bare details added up to quiet and grumpy and alone, well enough; obviously being smart hadn't saved him from a crappy life, any more than it had me. But none of it explained why he'd stick his neck out for me. He was a good doctor, probably one of the best in the country — of course he'd feel the urge to see me patched up properly, rather than let me half-ass the job myself. But by that logic he ought to be shipping me off to the funny farm, not keeping my stupid fucked-up secrets.

[ ](http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y135/shinychimera/Artwork_by_Shinychimera/?action=view&current=Jimontheseawall.png)

I fought the urge to look up his meal debits, find out where he spent his time between classes. Instead I rolled to my feet and started walking briskly toward the gleaming sunset beyond the seawall. Darkness was descending fast over the campus behind me, but shards of light undulated across the ocean ahead, bright and almost painful. I dropped the padd and hauled myself up on the wall, dangling my feet over the edge and watching the glimmers shrink and vanish one by one. I braced tight fists on the concrete, squinting out into the chilling breeze. Two months, give or take, since I'd thought maybe I was leaving the Great Plains behind for good, and the quick fluid sunsets on the coast were still alien and beautiful to me.

How bizarre would it be, to stand on a whole new fucking world, to watch someone else's sun set at the end of day? Imagination projected just a flicker of my mother watching strange daybreaks and nightfalls from the deck of her starship, before I jerked my feet up and pivoted away from the last red spark of sunlight, dropping back onto the walkway.

Alien planets and unlikely futures were completely fucking irrelevant right now; I needed to decide what to do about Bones. I picked up my padd, frowned back at the artificial lights appearing all over campus, including his dorm, then headed down the stairs to the dark and stony beach instead. Being willing to look the other way didn't mean he wanted my company. He'd volunteered to be my doctor, not my friend. But I felt like I owed him _something_ — some connection, some bit of effort. Something more than just showing up wrecked on his doorstep the next time the itch caught up with me.

He knew next to nothing about me, had even less reason to care.

I felt the vivid tactile memory of his fingers, gentle on my face and my body — but no. Those might belong to any doctor, and tenderness in healing didn't mean a fucking thing.

He hadn't seen the heart of it. How hard I flirted with danger and pushed my limits; how deep the pain was twined into my cock and balls. How much I hungered for the aftermath of fear and anger and high emotion: that twisted caricature of the "little death". On the beach, I broke into a long lope, pounding my feet across the shallow stone shelves and hard-packed sand. I was sick and weird, diseased and dangerous like he said, but he had stepped through the veil with me, into the cancerous darkness and poisonous silence that no one else knew was there. He was on the inside with me, and he didn't even know it.

Yet he knew _something_ now about the way I sought out pain and hid the consequences, over and over, compulsive and wrong and self-destructive. I could feel my teeth savaging my lower lip even now, breath churning through my nostrils, muscles thrumming with tension and confusion. He _knew_. And he hadn't flinched away.

So what?

He was the only person who'd ever seen that violence in me, outside the bloody haze of flying fists belonging to people who were in it as deep as I was.

So fucking _what_?

It didn't matter. I stopped running, rubbed my hands down hard over my face, pulling flesh and skin out of shape. He knew, and he did care, in some distant professional way, but it wouldn't change anything.

Once, I'd stolen a car. I'd known that no matter what I did next, it was going to end badly — wouldn't have mattered if I'd turned around and gone home, if I'd taken the beast to a police station, if I'd kept driving on and on all night long — didn't matter at all, I was doomed from the moment I put the key in the ignition.

And I felt the same way now — no matter what I did, my stint at Starfleet was going to crash and burn sooner or later. The question, as always, was whether I was going to crash with it like dear old dad, or if that inexplicable stupid stubborn _thing_ that forced me to save myself was still there. It had driven me out of the careening car, it had clawed me out of fights that should have killed me, and it had led me back to the medkit again and again when it would have been so much easier to give up. Every twisted thing I'd ever done came down to that unrelentingly selfish desire: to live, to keep fighting, to beg, borrow or steal another chance even when I didn't deserve one.

Bones had given me a second chance. And fuck if I wasn't going to find a way to give a little something back to him.

  


#### McCoy

The flight instructor dismissed us, and I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that no matter how real it felt, what I was facing was only a sim. Not real flight. None of the real dangers. But despite all Pop's best efforts, some things simply can't be _willed_ away.

 _I hate to break it to you, but Starfleet_ operates _in space._

 _You're_ weak, _boy. It's just in your head — you let what's in your head control you, you're worthless to those as need you._

Joining Starfleet had been _stupid_ , but it hadn't been weak; getting myself to San Francisco hadn't been weak, even if I'd gotten drunk to go through with it. And none of that God-damned mattered. I still felt like an ass, sitting outside the sim lab with my head in my hands and my heart in my throat. There was no flask this time — never would be again — and I didn't dare look up, let alone try to talk to anybody. Someone was bold enough to pat my shoulder on their way by, and I couldn't even muster up an "I'll be fine." Too afraid I was going to be sick if I stopped breathing through my nose long enough to speak.

But God damn it, if I couldn't do this I had no clue how I was going to manage an actual training flight. And even if I got the dirtside post I was angling for — well, as long as I stayed in Starfleet there was no guarantee I was always going to be able to keep my feet on terra firma.

Finally my group was called in, and it took everything I had to stand and enter the sim — the other cadets nearest were watching me uneasily and I'd be willing to lay odds I was white as a sheet. Maybe pushing on towards green. I was still preoccupied with getting the safety harness settled when the intercom crackled to life.

"Good morning," a familiar voice said, calm and faintly amused. "This is Cadet James T. Kirk and I'll be your pilot today. We're gonna take it slow and easy on the bones, so buckle up, sit tight, and enjoy the ride — you're in good hands."

I gawped at the speaker for a moment, trying to figure out how — why! — the hell Jim had pulled this one off and so surprised that I completely forgot to be sickened by the takeoff swoop. Too occupied with _what the hell_ to remember that I was afraid.

It didn't last of course — it couldn't — but it was easier than I expected to undo the buckle when ordered, to try and remember what to do and in what order it needed to be done. Don't know what Jim was dealing with up in the cockpit, but given the shuddering turbulence that nearly sent me to my knees about halfway through it probably wasn't pretty.

Clever bastard. I needed to do some thinking about _why_ having him up there made the difference over some other cadet; Jim couldn't have had that much in-ship time, was as green as the rest of us. But somehow knowing he was up there got me through — I completed my task, stowed my gear properly, belted back in, and remembered to breathe through a landing so smooth I almost didn't feel touchdown.

I searched the moving column of cadets for Jim on our way back to the Med Admin building for debriefing, but either the pilots had their own post-sim assessment or he'd managed to slip away, since he wasn't actually part of my cadet bloc. I tried not to hope, but when the clock tower finally began to chime and I could let the sea of red uniforms carry me outside, his voice carried down to me through the dazzle of sunshine.

"Bones!"

Jim stood at the top of the big stairs that led up from bioscences to the main quad, raising his hand in my direction. Don't know what was on my face when I looked up at him, but he grinned and shouldered his way around the hurrying students to hop up on the long polished railing and slide down to meet me. I shook my head in disbelief, watching people dodge and cuss at him as he zipped by. He didn't need encouragement but I caught myself almost smiling anyway when he landed near me, bouncing a step forward on his toes.

He rumpled his hair back, managing to look cocky and sheepish at the same time. "So. Did you pass?"

"Somehow," I allowed. "How the blazes did you manage to arrange that, anyway?"

An elaborate shrug rolled off his shoulders; watchful eyes taking in the ebbing crowd around us. "Just had to talk to the right person. And flying's my kinda thing."

"Of course it is. Right along with skydiving and running with the bulls." But I couldn't help the half-smile; Lord knew I was grateful, if still confused about _why_. Now that he wasn't lying in a hospital bed he was magnetic, full of vibrant energy, and no more likely to be forthcoming about his reasons. "Thank you."

"Hey, no problem." His easy smile warmed me, but a restless hand fidgeted across the small of his back. What did he want?

I hesitated, then tilted my head toward the med mess where I usually ate after morning courses. "Join me for lunch?"

Clear blue eyes brightened like the sky above us, and a hopeless twinge shot through my chest. Professional distance didn't stand a damned chance against Jim's sudden exuberance. He hopped over to open the door for me, grabbed a tray with a ridiculous flourish, and craned his neck to check out the new surroundings with an eager hyperawareness that seemed part of his nature.

"I'll warn you I'm not used to company at meals." I turned my padd face down on my tray and slid along behind him, pulling bits of lunch off the line without really looking at them.

"What, you eat alone?"

"I eat and I study, usually."

"So...you'd rather read than talk to people."

"I didn't say that. But there's only so much time in the day, and a lot of research to keep on top of...." I trailed off as he flashed a grin at a handful of passing girls.

Jim looked back just in time to catch the end of the eye-roll. He laughed, and led the way to a table by the window, holding his tray of goodies high overhead, safe from jostling elbows. I shook my head, watched him settle and strip the napkin off his silverware.

"Seriously, Jim. You must be able to find more exciting company for lunch."

"Seriously, Bones? Do you ever do anything that's not serious?"

"No, I don't." I said it flatly, but his eyes gleamed; somehow he caught the sardonic undertone that everyone else around me always missed.

"Oh, I see. Grumpy old man, no sense of humor at all."

"That's right."

"And I should be hanging out with the fun people my own age."

"Yup."

"You're so fucking full of shit, Bones."

I tried hard to glare at him, but I felt my eyes crinkling at the corners. "And you've got the foulest mouth I've ever heard."

"So? At least I'm interesting to talk to."

"Are you, now?"

"C'mon, Bones, seriously. If you want to be serious." He leaned forward on his forearms, lowering his voice, looking me in the eye. "These brats may all have had to be geniuses to get in here, but it's like they all got turned out of the same pretty suburban smart factory. You and me, we're not like that. A little dirt and blood and whiskey under the smarts, right?"

I tilted my head towards him, trying to understand the entreaty I could barely hear beneath his guileless exterior.

"Something like," I agreed at last, voice gruff.

A wide and conspiratorial grin spread across his face.

"Good! It's you and me against the universe, then."

I couldn't help smiling back, small and wry and maybe just a little sad, shaking my head at his protean moods. He'd needed someone to trust, of course he needed a friend; I wasn't the best candidate, but I got the feeling there was no stopping Jim Kirk when he'd made up his mind.

σ


	6. Spotting the Cop

#### Kirk

Bones and I emerged from the mess into the bright sunlight together, and I smiled, feeling just a little more hopeful about the week. I still couldn't imagine how I was going to survive four years on this tightrope, but at least I had one more reason to keep trying. And it was really fucking weird to feel like there was someone to watch me do the balancing act — I'd been doing it on my own for, well, forever. I waved at Bones as he headed off, and started trotting up the long green slope that led toward Kendel Hall.

"Cadet Kirk!"

My head whipped around — for one bizarre moment I thought I was in trouble for walking on the grass — but the clear voice belonged to Captain Pike. He waited for me at the edge of the walkway, and his body language didn't set off any warnings; he certainly had bigger things to concern him than lawns.

"How'd the shuttle simulation go?" he asked, waving off my salute, all friendly and casual as I stepped into conversation range. I knew he'd approved my request to switch sections for the piloting test, but I watched his eyes, trying to figure out what he was looking for in return.

"Fine, sir. Didn't kill anyone."

"Glad to hear it," he said, dimples appearing on his cheeks, laugh lines creasing the corners of his eyes. "And your friend?"

I cracked a knuckle, wondered just how closely he'd been watching me.

"He passed, he did okay." I hesitated, then figured he had to know all about McCoy's fears after that first drunken shuttle flight. "I figure I'll take him up for a few more trips when the sim lab is free, so he can work on his aviophobia in private."

"Good — phobias are hard things to deal with." He pivoted, waited for me to come alongside, and began walking toward the science buildings. "I saw the scores from your midterms. You're doing well, Kirk."

 _Better than you expected?_ Better than I should be, maybe. There was only one safe response, though.

"Thank you, sir."

I kept pace with him, my stomach churning. Being ahead of my peers had never gotten me anything but trouble. Things were supposed to be different here, 'Fleet said they wanted the best, but there were always unwritten rules waiting to trip you up.

"I'm sure most of these entry classes are pretty basic for you." His eyes flicked a question at me that I pretended not to see. His lips pursed. "Have you talked to Lieutenant Chapel about which specialty you intend to pursue?"

I blinked, then placed the name. The advisor I was supposed to have talked to at the beginning of the quarter. "Not yet," I said truthfully. I'd hacked my name in among her first week's appointments, so that I showed up on her 'done' list, and hadn't thought about her since.

The look he gave me was much sharper. "Have you spoken to her at all?"

Damn, he was quick on the draw.

"I tried," I lied. "Things were pretty crazy that first week. She had her hands full with extraterrestrials that really needed the orientation, and I pretty much had things handled."

"Kirk..." He stopped and turned to face me on the wide concrete walk leading up to Kendel Hall, and yeah, he knew exactly which class I was heading for, didn't he? "I respect that you're capable of taking care of yourself, but we provide advisors for a reason, and not just for those new to Earth's culture. The Academy's a big change for you and the lieutenant has the tools to help. So the next time I see you, I expect you to report that you allowed her to _do_ her job."

"Yes, sir," I said with a smile, giving him a nice proper salute; he nodded and took his leave as the clock tower started tolling the hour and cadet uniforms converged on the doors.

Like I had any fucking choice? I didn't need someone to show me where the bathroom was and how to finish a term paper on time, and I sure as hell didn't need someone to discuss my non-existent plans with. But the game was the game, and I needed to make the right moves for as long as I had before Pike gave up on me, so I looked up the location of Chapel's office during class and headed over after.

The student center decor was downright schizoid. Tall ceilings and dignified materials on floors, doors and walls, surely meant to communicate that we were honorable professionals now, and would we please act like it? And all that dignity was filled with loud music and cheerful voices, decorated with stained-but-comfortable couches and handmade flyers posted cheekily around the edges of the epic "Your Career In Starfleet" posters. _Boldly Go_ blah blah blah over a friendly-looking Tellarite in red. Fuckin' _Make A Difference_ over an intrepid lady in science blue. _Destined to Soar_ over a dude in a captain's chair. The lean, decisive face over the gold shirt was uncannily familiar, and my fists tightened at my sides.

"They're all composites. Not a soul on that wall actually exists."

I'd heard the footsteps slow and stop behind me, so I turned calmly enough. I bit back the _no shit_ that hovered in the air and saluted when I saw the lieutenant's pips on a gray instructor's uniform. Tall woman, brunette updo, calm blue eyes.

"But you know that, _everyone_ knows that, and you think I'm an idiot for saying so. Join me in my office, Cadet Kirk?"

I glanced down the hall she indicated, saw the _LT. CHAPEL_ nameplate on the door, and smiled. "Of course, sir."

Following her felt like walking to the principal's office; dodging the scrutiny of the 'grown-ups' had been important back then, too, and the familiar bland, unworried mask fell into place.

Her office was small, painted dusky blue; cluttered enough to show this was someone who actually did her job, not so much that it was claustrophobic. She left the door ajar, closed only far enough to soften the music outside.

"Have a seat," she said, moving around behind her desk, where a small holo showed me the back of a well-groomed herding dog of some kind, looking appealingly up at her, tail in mid-wag. "And I'd like to know how you altered my schedule — you're not the first one to do so, but your particular hack was fairly elegant."

Jeez, she really wanted me to know she was smart. Well, I could play that; charming genius was an easy role to wear. I sat, scratched one instep through the soft boot leather with the opposite heel. "Your scheduling program really _wants_ appointments to be made and marked off — it wasn't hard to tickle it into doing what it's designed to do. What can I say?" I smiled, raised an eyebrow. "I'm picking up new skills all the time."

"I see. So, now that we've established each other's credentials, what can I do for you?" She leaned back in her chair, clasping hands loosely across her middle. She had a nice figure, solid and supple at the same time; I wondered how strong those hands were.

"Captain Pike asked me to come talk to you about what I'm doing here, exactly."

"And?"

"Would it be fair to say I don't really know, yet?"

She nodded. "Yes, it would. Most cadets declare a specialty at enlistment, but you're not most cadets."

"You know I tested out of standard schooling at thirteen, right?" Keeping her focused on the academics; always easiest to lie with pieces of the truth. "I've been an autodidact since then, pursuing whatever interested me, mostly on the net. I'm not used to thinking in terms of narrowing it down to one field."

She nodded, and followed up with several questions about the course programs I'd explored, the types of teachers I'd worked with (or hadn't, mostly), my extracurricular activities. Heh — if only she knew.

I finally offered her a helpless, appealing lift of the shoulders.

"I wasn't really plotting out a useful transcript, I'm afraid; the academics really are all over the place."

"There are only a few positions in Starfleet requiring such a breadth of knowledge," she said, evenly, though the tiniest quirk of her eyebrow made me think she might be amused. "I think for you we can _probably_ rule out captain's yeoman, which wouldn't require four years of officer training in any event."

I smiled again, genuinely, if only because her statement echoed my thoughts about qualifying as a cabin boy, and shrugged.

"All I really know right now is that I'm good at practical applications." Feeding her more useless bits of truth to chew on. "Tactics, not retroactive analysis. Synthesis, not primary research. Repairs, not design."

"Which still leaves you a good many options."

"Tell me about it," I laughed, spreading my hands like the slightly overwhelmed former delinquent I was supposed to be; her lips smiled but her eyes kept watching me soberly. I had a tiny smug moment of knowing I was at better at hiding my watchfulness than she was, but it didn't help me unravel just _what_ she was looking for. I resisted the urge to squirm free of the uncomfortable itch crawling up between my shoulder blades, to tell her that all her efforts were pointless.

"Captain Pike is very good at putting people in the right position to achieve their full potential; his advice isn't just empty counseling." _And he already has plans for you_ , I read between the lines, a thought that made my spine stiffen just a little more. She set her hands flat on the desk. "But I don't think you should rush to a decision before you've settled in a little more. It won't hurt you, _or_ him, to give it a little time and decide on a specialty at the end of the semester."

"That sounds best to me too, Lieutenant," I said, shifting my weight forward on the cushioned seat.

"I haven't dismissed you, Cadet. We still need go over everything you and I missed during orientation week."

I nodded cooperatively, kept my sigh purely internal, and settled in to play the game to its conclusion.

#### McCoy

Jim gave me a wave and headed up across the lawn toward his afternoon class. He and I had compared our schedules, worked out that it wouldn't be too hard to have lunch together at the mess in the med building Tuesdays and Thursdays, if Jim was willing to hustle a bit after his physics lab — and of course he was; he seemed to be made of energy. By rights, I should have been exhausted after he took off; instead, I walked into the next lecture hall carrying that terrifying spot of brightness with me.

Terrifying, because he _was_ bright, and mercurial, and oh so damaged.

Terrifying, because we weren't so unalike. Dirt, blood, and whiskey, like he'd said; though I wondered in what proportions they could be dug from beneath _his_ skin.

Terrifying, because I could keep his secret, help him keep Starfleet, nudge him toward someone who could really _help_ him, but I couldn't carry him. I had all I could do to carry myself.

I stared unseeing at my padd, tuning out a lecture on public health factors on starships and starbases I could have given in my sleep.

I'd managed to keep my feet beneath me so far, but there were days it was a very near thing. Days when the only thing keeping me from surrendering and crawling back to civilian life with my tail between my legs was the mulish, driven work ethic I'd had to absorb as a kid, along with my corn flakes and my gran's practical churchin'.

And now I couldn't leave, because Jim somehow needed me — and God, wasn't I setting myself up with that? I'd promised myself I wasn't going to fall into another helpless trajectory around someone else's maelstrom, but it was already much too late for distance.

Those supernatural eyes had caught me way back on that first shuttle ride, as surely as Jim's bruises and his cagy loneliness. When he'd introduced himself, I'd briefly wondered whether he was related to George Kirk, but I'd been too distracted by take-off to ask him. The question had come back to me several times since the aftermath of the ER, though, as I pondered where that bitterness in Jim might have come from.

I knew what most civilians knew about the _Kelvin_ but not much beyond that. Remembered Pop off on a tear about honor and sacrifice, but I'd been six when Captain Kirk had gone down with the ship to save the life of his crew, so I'd been listening to Pop more out of a sense of self-preservation than because I understood a word he was saying. The rant about Kirk the Hero could have turned into "Boy, are you listening to me?" at any moment, and not responding properly to that would have been dangerous.

 _Kirk, George obituary_ , I typed into my padd, figuring I'd start there. Now that I was thinking about it, Jim was just the right age to be that infant born on a shuttle outside the dying _Kelvin_. I skipped the formal Starfleet obit, which wouldn't discuss his family, and refined the search to local news.

I tapped the first record in the _Riverside Current_ and found myself very confused; it was for a George Samuel Kirk, but the dates were all wrong and the image was a school portrait of a boy with washed-out mistrustful blue eyes, no more than fourteen or fifteen. Not the person I'd been looking for at all, but I felt a sympathetic pang in my own chest, an echo of remembered loss.

I glanced up at the classroom screen for a moment, then flipped back over to the search record. The next result was more what I was looking for: a straightforward text obit for Lieutenant George Kirk, thirty-one when he died; more about his life in Iowa than about his career or his death. Survived by his wife and two sons, none of whom were named, but on reflection that didn't surprise me. I'd been in Riverside briefly, because the damn recruiting shuttle took off from the shipyard built there in his memory; it wasn't that big a place, and everyone in town would have known who they were. And his family wouldn't have wanted any more of the media spotlight than they had already received — I'd gotten the distinct impression, from various broadcast Remembrance Day ceremonies over the years, that Kirk's widow had avoided attention like the plague.

Back again to the next search result — a breathless illustrated piece on "the young hero" which I expected was a bit longer on propaganda than on facts. But it was the photographs I was interested in. The official fleet portrait at the top made my breath catch: firm jaw, thick eyebrows, and those _eyes_ , bright and proud above the uniform. Even given the formal expression, they were sparkling, vividly blue, surrounded by faint laugh lines — and completely familiar. Genetic variation be damned; if Jim and George weren't father and son I'd eat my reds. In fact — I paged back to the first record, considering; it didn't take long until I had the two Georges side-by-side on the screen, and yes, all three of them were likely related. I wondered what had happened to George Samuel; the obit held no clues, not even "suddenly" or "after a long illness."

    

More pieces for the puzzle; what, if anything, in Jim's behavior could be explained by losing a father at birth and an older brother too young?

It had been years since I expected the universe to be anything other than hostile and unforgiving. Didn't stop me being mad on Jim's behalf over the unfairness of it all.

I looked up at the front of the class without really seeing it, pondering Jim Kirk and resilience and resolve, and the idea that had been tickling at the back of my mind since his voice had come over the speaker in the sim finally started to take shape.

The instructor released us with the assignment to to draft a management plan for an outbreak on a standard Starbase: quarantine, treat, and locate the source. I had a free period, which I usually spent buried in studies or plotting research, but I took a walk over to the student center instead. I ignored the familiar chaos inside the building, and headed for the office in the west wing where I'd met Lieutenant Chapel at the beginning of the semester, hoping she'd have a free minute to talk about my ambitious notion.

She stood in her doorway, still in a smiling conversation with another cadet who — other than being blonde — could have been Chapel herself, ten years ago. I thought I'd paused at the end of the hallway soon enough not to interrupt, but they both glanced over at me, and the younger woman gave the lieutenant a peck on the cheek.

The handsome cadet gave me a saucy wave on her way by; before I could respond Lieutenant Chapel said, "Doctor McCoy. Come in."

"Ma'am," I said, following her into her office, then shook my head. "Sorry. Sir."

"It's hard to leave those southern manners behind," she said, calmly, settling in her chair like a queen on her throne.

I raised a curious eyebrow.

"New Orleans," she said, letting her vowels get just a little lazier, "though I've lived a few places since then. And she's my niece, not my daughter."

"Reading my mind, sir?"

A smile got away from her. "No, doctor. We get the question a lot. And you should know she's a very fine nurse. But you're not here to ask after my family."

"No, sir," I said, resisting the nervous urge to clear my throat. "I wanted to thank you for your advice, on handling the shuttle sim; I passed today, by the skin of my teeth." And with a little morale boost from Jim.

"Congratulations, Doctor."

"Uh, thank you, sir. Getting through it gave me an idea, though. I was wondering if you might be willing to support a conference proposal to the Academy brass."

"Go on."

"I can't be the only person who's joined Starfleet still wrestling with aviaphobia or astrophobia or kenophobia," I said, trying to keep my own fear of the vacuum from coloring my professional tone. "Some of the enlisted folk may not even realize they're susceptible until they're on their first voyage out there in the black. Not to mention psychological trauma resulting from accidents or combat, the possibility that high-ranking diplomats might be phobic..." I caught myself starting to run on and cut the words short.

"In any event, while a full semester might be overdoing it, I thought a one- to two-day conference on managing and handling space-related fears might be useful. This isn't my first rodeo: I know how to organize, I can make contact with outside experts, and I've got this blasted first-hand experience to draw on. But I'm not so stupid as to think an unsolicited proposal coming from a first-year cadet — _any_ first-year cadet — is going to have much chance of getting past the review desk, much less getting funded."

Chapel didn't say anything for a minute or two, cool blue eyes not on me but on the holo of her dog. Finally, she looked up.

"You're right on all counts. Draft a proposal for my review, Doctor. I'll run it past the head of Medical and if we like what we see, we'll sign off on it."

I rose; she followed me to her feet. "Thank you, sir."

"I'm pleased to see you confronting your fears so directly — it's a good trait in an officer. And in a good chief medical officer, who often has to deal with everyone else's fears as well."

My eyebrows lifted. When we'd first met for my obligatory orientation, I'd thought I'd made it very clear I was angling for a planetside position, preferably in research, after graduation. Serving on a ship, as her CMO, balancing responsibility for the health and mental well-being of hundreds of people isolated in the darkness and silence of space... wasn't a question. Wasn't an _option_ ; stood the hair up on the back of my neck. But she calmly shook my hand, holding my gaze while we said our goodbyes. I hurried back towards my dorm, focusing hard on ideas for the conference.

 _Gutless boy_.

I scowled. I _was_ dealing with this particular problem head-on. Besides, staring down my fears happened to be a hell of lot easier than facing my own nebulous future, or figuring out what exactly I thought I was doing with enigmatic Jim and his fool's gold smile.

σ


	7. Watching the Rear View

#### Kirk

Bones didn't seem to mind when I joined him again for lunch on Thursday. And I tried hard to concentrate on classes and coursework that week, to act like the good boy Pike and Chapel had mistaken me for, to chase away the miserable little fantasies that encroached around the edges whenever I started to feel like I couldn't hack normal life.

Bones would never know how hard it was for me to stay on campus the next weekend. I chased Ernie off, broke open the nasty-ass tequila and stayed in my room and dreamed, bringing myself off over and over again with fantasies of the _weird_ I could have been out chasing. I should have felt virtuous, trying not to live down to Bones' expectations, but wallowing in it just made me feel filthy and twisted.

I tried hard to get back that feeling of clarity when classes started again Monday, but I knew it was only a matter of time — the need to go out and lose myself got worse every goddamn day, no matter how hard I drove myself with honest work. I didn't _belong_ at the Academy. At the beginning the joke had been on them; they were the idiots for not seeing how wrong I was inside. Now it felt like it was on me — every day that I fooled them made me feel more fucked up, more like I was wasting everyone's time. Running across campus to meet Bones the next Tuesday and Thursday helped; sending funny or cryptic or annoying messages to his padd helped, trying to be anyone but the sick bastard he'd seen on his ER bed helped. But I couldn't tell if I was fooling him, too, and the restlessness kept building.

Whatever. The test came on Friday night, when I gave in to the tight-wound pressure under my skin and finally bolted for the city. I ran into a little more trouble than I'd bargained for, but I found my way back to him at four in the morning, still high as a kite on the endorphins and the wrong, light and numb and floating and calm.

Bones didn't seem surprised to see my blank, fucked-up face at his door, or my one arm folded up against my bare chest under the jacket draped around my shoulders. Opened the door wearing nothing but shorts and rumpled bed-head; didn't say a word, just stepped aside to let me into the dark room. He sealed the door behind me, called the lights up halfway, wrapped himself in a robe and picked up his kit.

My gaze wandered around the bland beige room, barely big enough for one; I made a lazy catalog of the narrow window, the jumbled quilt on the bed, the sparse handful of impersonal personal belongings. He was gentle about slipping the cheap jacket off my shoulders, and only muttered softly to himself at the ribbons of black blood that had dried in a crusty mess on my back. The scanner came out and he checked each of the belt stripes that cut and welted my skin from shoulders to knees, and the occasional bloody divot left by the heavy buckle. It was worst up high on my naked back — the fucker never even took my pants down — but apparently Bones still thought better of asking me to sit down because he pulled my good elbow around to get a look at the rest of me.

I watched impassively while his lips tightened; the scanner surveyed the bloody, mangled wrist and thumb of my right hand, the dark ligature marks around the wrist of the left, and the distinct imprint of a dirty chain link fence rubbed onto my chest. My face, I mused, was probably no worse off than the first time Bones'd seen me. I noticed the haphazard locks of his hair fall every which way when he leaned in to see whatever it was he thought the tricorder wouldn't tell him.

He pressed a very light finger to the tips of the nails of my bloody hand, watching the color recede and return with stormy dark eyes. I got the feeling that words got away from him, then, because he didn't sound very doctor-like when he said, "What did they _do_ to you?"

"Just he. One. And it was...he just left me. Tied to the fence. I had to get free."

"You did this to _yourself_?" Fingertips hovering over the damage.

"Had to get free. Was getting late." The struggle had been intense. Frightening. Sickening. Satisfying. Over now. I won. "Knew you could fix it."

He stared at me. Shoved his hair back off his forehead. "You just don't give up, do you?"

"Never." Very satisfying.

"Christ, Jim." He shook his head sharply and reached into the kit for a hypo.

"Don't," I said with a slow smile, and he looked askance at me. Probably had blood on my teeth... not very attractive. Maybe I shouldn't smile at him just now.

"Look, no matter who you are, you're going to want a painkiller while I fix the broken thumb — that's a lot of pieces to put back together."

"I'm good...."

His expression was both exasperated and pained. "Don't you need some kind of foreplay to get off on the pain, Jim? I mean, most masochists don't enjoy migraines any more than the rest of us." He lifted and cradled my hand in his, trying to decide where to start.

"Not usually," I said vaguely, trying to summon an answer that might make sense to him. I did need... But it was too complicated. I shrugged with one shoulder. "Fucked up in the head. You know."

"No, I _don't_ know." He started running a dermal regenerator over the torn wrist. "Is that a professional diagnosis?"

I lifted my lip in amusement before I remembered that I'd decided I wasn't going to smile at him. "My family doesn't do shrinks."

"Maybe...." _They ought to,_ my brain filled in.

I yanked my hand out of his grip, took a step back, my hazy calm evaporating like rain on hot pavement. He lifted his hands, his regenerator beeping protests.

"Whoa, easy. Talking to myself. I wasn't making suggestions. Really."

I was furious with him, and angry that I was furious, and I didn't want to be on my guard; I wanted the fucking tranquility back. I paced up the side of the bed and and back, with my hand clamped hard against my chest. _Goddamn motherfucking son of a bitch, how hard do I have to work for a little peace?_

"Shhh, it's all right. I'm just a country doctor, I don't try to fix the inside of people's heads." His soft drawl was soothing, but my hellish, exhilarating emotions roiled out from under my broken control. Needed to get a grip, needed that control, I could scream and rage all I wanted with the belt across my back but this was healing time, hush time, truce time.

I stalked back and forth again, pain flaring like sunspots across my back, my ass, my legs; grinding through my hand like gravel in a blender. God fucking damn it, I was stronger than this.

  


#### McCoy

My chest tightened as Jim paced like a caged beast, breathing fast and wild and shallow, eyes blazing. I didn't dare move until he finally stopped, lowered his head and closed his eyes, struggling for some kind of mastery. I stepped closer very slowly, and kept my voice soft and low, talking to him like I'd ease a spooked horse.

"Come on, Jim. Let me finish fixing that up."

He stood very still in the half-light; the only motion I could see at all was the slow bob of his larynx and the thrum of his pulse under the corner of his jaw, yet he was still tense and torqued, senses hyperaroused. My brain was ticking over the drugs in my kit that would relax him but I didn't want to put him even more on the defensive — better to use what he was familiar with.

"It's gonna hurt. I promise."

He turned back to me, eyes gleaming manic blue.

"Yes," he said, finally, simply. Some hard-won vestige of that eerie calm was returning — his skin flushed, pain crossing over to pleasure by pure force of will. _Hell_. Stubborn didn't begin to cover it.

I couldn't quite stop the grimace as he _sat down_ on the foot of my bed, responding to the pressure on his abused skin with another obscene grin. He was laughing at himself and at me, making all the skittish fury I'd just seen vanish like a mirage. All his reactions were just _wrong_ , and if the mere thought of psychs was going to wind him up so tight I didn't know how I was ever going to get professional help for him.

He held out the maimed hand to me. I took it, but the angle was all wrong; I needed three arms.

Sighing, I gave Jim the scanner.

"Hold that, so I can see what I'm doing." I spread his hand out on his thigh, just above his knee, and knelt in front of him.

"Hmmmm," he said, a cheerful rumble in his throat. "You look good down there."

"Not now, Jim." I brushed off the misguided come-on, focused on the readout in front of me.

The fragments of bone were jagged — and I tried to halt the images of him yanking again and again on his bonds, pulling and tearing until the trapezium and the thumb metacarpal gave way — but nothing was too far out of place; mending him wasn't going to take as much manipulation as I'd thought. Too bad for Jim, better for me. I concentrated on setting the bones and ignoring the less-than-subtle signs of Jim's arousal: the erection in front of me, the ragged breathing. Since that strange morning in his room I'd been reading up on the perception of pain and pleasure; words like _nociception_ and _algolagnia_ didn't begin to touch his weird emotional responses, but if he was able to make this bearable in his own way then I was going to focus and do the job I had to do.

_Algolagnia: A physical phenomenon in which the brain interprets pain signals as pleasurable, leading to psychological effects._

Sure, this could be just a quirk of his neurons.

_Neuronal or psychological perceptions of pain may be altered by touch deprivation during the developmental years._

Or it could be something a lot more complicated. My teeth clenched. I manipulated the fragments until they were properly aligned, eliciting soft moans I doubt he was aware he was vocalizing, and set the osteogenerator on his thumb.

"Don't move."

I stood up, knees cracking, and looked down at him. His eyes were half-lidded, but he wasn't in the least bit sleepy. He needed so much more than simple healing.

I took his fervid face in my hands, tilted it up so I could get a better look, distantly aware of the heat coming off his body. This time whoever'd done the battery hadn't broken his nose, but he had a fairly nasty deep laceration over his right eyebrow. I set to closing it; Jim practically hummed under my touch.

I had to clear my throat to brush the anger aside before I trusted myself to speak. "You don't want me to fix up your back, do you." I knew the answer, but I needed to hear it from him so I could feel less guilty.

He shook his head slowly, frowning; maybe my matter-of-fact tone caught him off guard. Or maybe he wasn't expecting me to _get_ that. I didn't want to, not really, and I wasn't at all happy about letting him roam about all torn up.

"I'll just make sure it won't scar, then." I looked down, expressionless, and adjusted the regenerator. "We really need to find you a better way to get whatever it is this gives you."

He exhaled. "I've tried other ways," he said thinly. "If it isn't real it doesn't work."

I hesitated. Did he have any idea what he was really looking for?

_Keep your mind on your work, boy._

Sternly, I turned Jim sideways so I could reach his back, fixed until there was nothing left that was going to scar or hinder him, then struggled to let the rest go. Trying not to imagine him leaning back in a chair tomorrow and — what, reliving a brutal whipping, just so that he could get off on it? So he could prove he had control over some crazy, out-of-control situation he'd brought on himself in the first place?

When I finally stood back, he tilted his head at me and leaned back on my bed with his legs spread, raw invitation in his eyes. I ground my teeth in frustration, and turned my back to pack up my kit. The way his backwards wiring had gotten him wound, he would have responded the same to anything vaguely humanoid. I just happened to be the lucky soul at hand.

But God damn it, I was a doctor, not a one-night stand. And Jim was my _patient_. And even if neither of those things were true, I was _not_ going to take advantage of an involuntary response to what had happened tonight.

No matter how much he thought he wanted me to.

I fussed over getting everything seated just so in the kit until I finally heard him stand and retrieve his jacket. I risked a glance his direction and saw he was hesitating just as much over what to say. As I'd already come to expect, action sufficed: he pulled the zipper up sharply and gave me a short, tight nod. Brusque, almost unfriendly. But that damnable trust was there again in those blue blue eyes — the closest thing I was going to get to a "thank you," and I knew it.

I let him back out of the room, stood in the doorway to watch him go the rest of the way down the hall on his own, then tumbled back into bed, closed my eyes and threw my arm over my face. Tried not to think about his warmth and energy under my hands. Tried not to wonder what drove him, what he meant by “real.”

Tried not to mistake a kink-driven come-on for Jim Kirk having it in him to want someone like me.

  


σ


	8. Running from the Law

#### Kirk

"I want _you_ , Bones." I gave the ragged part in his hair my best intense look. He stared determinedly down at his plate, chasing vegetables around with a fork. Warm air swirled in the crowded, noisy mess around us. "Not any of these other dumbfucks in red. I'm just talking about a nice evening of wholesome _non_ -twisted debauchery."

Another two weeks, another Friday night, and I was going crazy, thinking the scary humiliating madness that passed for my life had destroyed the simple little friendship we'd started to build. He still met me for lunch, acted normal enough during the daytime, but every time I'd tried to do something good for him, something to make up for late-night bloody and disgusting, he backed away. And now he refused to go out to the city with me.

"I'm studying tonight."

"You've been studying all week." And he had. And if he wasn't studying he'd been at St. Francis, working, way more than was strictly required for volunteer hours. I checked. The circles under his eyes were getting too fucking dark. Who knew a doctor could be so damn stubborn about letting someone else take care of him?

"Jim, on account of you having managed not to notice, let me let you in on something. Most everyone around here who isn't you or faculty spends _all_ their free time studying."

I grimaced. What the hell did he know about how hard I studied? The din of voices and trays and glasses and silverware around me was getting harder to tune out; every burst of laughter made my nerves tighten.

"Yeah, so? You either know it or you don't, at this point, right? Stuff it into a tired brain at the last minute and it falls right out again."

"Is that your theory?" He still didn't look up — he'd gotten very good at not looking me in the eye when I was trying to be persuasive. I could see spots of color high on his cheeks, though. "I'm being evaluated on xeno rounds next week. Patients from ten or more different species who might have any goddamn disease in the galaxy." He stabbed a bit of chicken breast, with feeling, then let the fork clatter down again.

"Bones, come on. Another day or two isn't going to make a difference. The odds of you studying the right symptoms of the right disease in the right alien in the next three days are stupid ones to bet on. You need to come out with me, get drunk and relax a little."

He pulled back, bracing his hands on the edge of the table. "Don't presume to know what I need."

I felt my jaw tighten, my temper slipping. I squashed it back brutally, breathing through my nose. "You really can be an ass, sometimes."

"Because I don't want to go drinking this close to finals?" he asked, stiffly, eyes narrowed.

"Because you'd rather run yourself into the ground than learn to pace yourself and, god forbid, pay a little attention to the people around you."

"I'm sorry, is this about you? I forgot."

My cheeks burned a little, because he wasn't entirely wrong. I needed to get out, and I'd been trying so hard to be _good_ all week. If Bones was with me maybe I could stop being such a sick little fuck for a while. But I _was_ worried about him, and I wanted to break the tension that had been building in him all week, get him to stop being so fucking stiff around me, maybe finally get him a full night's sleep.

"No," I snapped. "Actually this time I _am_ trying to make this about you. Have you looked in a fucking mirror lately?"

"Every morning."

"You look like shit. You're so busy doing 'the right thing' you haven't got any room left for a real life. No one can push themselves so hard all the time, Bones."

He rubbed at his jaw, and now he was meeting my gaze, eyes stony and dark.

"I haven't fallen down yet. Make your point, Jim."

My fists clenched and my eyes narrowed hard, my muscles quivered and my voice came out softer and more dangerous than I wanted it to.

"The _point_ is you don't fucking listen." There was more, I knew there was a lot more I wanted to say, but I also knew it was going to come out all wrong. All my 'make something happen' reflexes were twitching, and I wasn't about to aim them at Bones. The drive to get out, get lost, get into something dangerous had tripled, quadrupled.

I shoved my chair back, snatched an apple off the table and walked away, seething.

"Jim!"

I heard his chair scrape out, but I kept walking and I didn't look back.

  


#### McCoy

I watched Jim storm off, tension hard in my shoulders and upper back. I sat back slowly; he was always so damned _intense_. Always giving more to a conversation than I was prepared to give back; always thinking about six things at once and at least ten steps ahead. And still as selfish and bull-headed as any other twenty-odd kid I'd ever met. Or been.

Dawn had come far too early that morning. I'd stayed up too late studying the night before, rolled out of bed with a throbbing headache, and the day'd gone downhill from there. I'd known _exactly_ what Jim wanted when he caught up with me, and I wasn't going to let it happen.

_The math on this one is simple, McCoy; you're his_ doctor. _You don't go out drinking with a patient. End of story._

And I _did_ need to study. Jim thought I was making excuses, but I knew he didn't understand. Not that I figured he wasn't working hard in his courses, too; just that he was the kind of bright kid could read though something once, understand it, and retain it.

I had neither that ability, nor that luxury. Monday's xeno patients weren't just a test, weren't just case files to review. They were living, breathing people. Some other doctor's responsibility to treat, sure, based on their own judgment and not the suggestions of students like me, but I'd have patients of my own just like them someday. I couldn't let them down.

_Get it right, boy. You don't_ get _to be careless anymore. You screw up one time out of ten, that's one person killed or crippled by_ your _hand._

I flipped my padd over and tried to focus on the task at hand, using all the skills I'd so painstakingly built through medical school, memorizing lists forward and backward, creating mnemonics, fighting back the weary sense that no matter how hard I worked I wasn't learning the right things. Or making the right choices.

_No one can push themselves so hard all the time, Bones._

Damn Jim. I'd almost asked him if he'd been taking lessons in pissing me off from my ex, particularly the line about running myself into the ground. One of Joce's favorite complaints, that — as though I didn't know my own limits quite well. I didn't need him to save me from myself. And what the hell could he possibly know about what I needed?

A sudden image from last Friday splayed itself across my mind, Jim leaning back on my bed, lewd and inviting. Damn him again. I rubbed my face with my hands.

I'd focused completely on the hospital and school this week, keeping my mind on all the necessary work so that when I fell exhausted into my bed I _wouldn't_ conjure up that image. Jim was all kinds of broken, deserved kindness and help. Not this undoctorly desire to touch and hold, something I was certain he'd take all the wrong ways even if it was purely innocent — which it wasn't.

I left the mess with a black cloud of irritation following me, and my shoulderblades itched the whole afternoon, making it damned difficult to sit through classes that had never been so interminable. I tried without success to argue the feeling away; it was still there, lingering beneath my reds, when I finally headed back to my dorm room.

_He can't save you, you can't save him._

I fixed a mug of coffee, pulled on a set of headphones, propped up my feet and settled into my chair for a good long study session. After about fifteen minutes, I caught myself pressing my fingertips against my zygomatic bone, trying to stop the tic establishing itself in the muscle beneath my eye.

Well, hell.

_You're going to work yourself into an early grave, Len._

Jocelyn, not Jim, but clearly the two of them would have agreed on the point. Maybe I did need something of a break. But even if I could justify crossing that line, could I really follow him out into the raucous wild, watch him get drunk, maybe watch him get himself bloodied up? The very idea put a tight sick knot in my throat that had nothing to do with knowing I'd be the one had to fix him after.

_A nice evening of wholesome_ non _-twisted debauchery_ , he'd promised. Begged. Jim was doing his damnedest _not_ to get into trouble.

Even if I couldn't figure why, my coming along tonight _meant_ something to him. I eyed his bottle of Scotch, starting to gather dust where I'd stashed it on top of the wardrobe. The memory of his hands on mine around the bottle was still strong, the awareness that he so very rarely allowed anyone close. That was the part I hadn't been paying enough attention to, the source of the prickly knot between my shoulders since lunch.

He wanted my company. And maybe Jim wasn't the only one keeping everyone at arm's reach. Could be I'd really turned him down because going with him meant changing things between us a bit too much.

_You're his doctor! You don't_ get _to be careless..._

I'd turned him down because it was the right thing to do. Behaving any other way was beyond unprofessional — it was irresponsible. Reckless. Outright wrong, if my choices hurt him.

But he was already hurting. And while he might be in sore need of someone he'd allow to heal his bones and skin, he'd managed in his own way without a doctor before. What he was really begging for, what we both needed, was human connection.

All right. I leaned on my knees, ran fingers into my hair, clenched my fists. Being Jim's doctor wasn't really what I wanted, and given the dark and personal promise we'd started things with, maybe I'd been fooling myself that I could ever have really kept my professional distance. The physical temptation, that was something else, something still off limits, but he desperately needed a friend and that — maybe that was something I could handle.

_Fine, then, McCoy, if you're done being an asshole_. But I'd need to hurry if I wanted to catch Jim, find out if I'd pissed him off enough to tell me to go to hell. I changed out of my reds and headed over to Jim's room, wondering if I'd have to find some words of apology, or if we'd have another one of those cryptic non-conversations.

The floor was empty. No one answered the door. I leaned my palm flat on the jamb and stood there, cursing myself for a fool, for that moment of dangerous hope.

I had just straightened up to go back to my dorm, return to my studies, wait for Jim to show up battered at oh-dark-hundred, when I heard the lift doors open and heavy feet storming down the hall.

Jim appeared at the corner, breathing unevenly, a line of sweat along his hairline. His eyes widened a little at the sight of me, and then he broke into a smile that just about stopped my heart. Not his usual, carefully practiced charmer of a grin. No, this was wide and honest and lit up the whole damn hallway, and for just a moment made me think I might be the only thing in the world that had ever made him happy.

  


σ


	9. Smashing through the Gate

#### Kirk

I'd ditched my afternoon class, spent some time with the heavy bag at the gym trying to exhaust my lashing temper, but the fucked-up argument continued to burn under my skin, even after I'd said to hell with faking it anymore. _Time to strip off the pathetic Boy Cadet, and let the real me out._

I'd slammed my feet down hard on the sidewalk, running back to the dorm; was still breathing hard as I got off the lift. The last thing I expected to see was Bones standing outside my door. Bones with his arms folded across his chest, waiting. _Bones_. Not studying. Bones wearing _jeans_.

I grinned, almost laughing with disbelief. I couldn't help it.

"Glad to make your night," he said, searching my eyes, trying to hide his uncertainty under the the sour slant of his frown.

I kept smiling. I couldn't believe Bones had changed his mind, or how quickly what I wanted out of the night shifted when I saw him. The real me could just take a fucking hike tonight. I clapped him on the shoulder as I opened the door.

[ ](http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y135/shinychimera/Star_Trek/Fic%20Illustrations/In%20For%20Repairs/?action=view&current=09bBonesjeans.png)

"Glad you _could_ make it. Give me five, 'kay?"

"Yeah, yeah." Unfortunately for him I could tell he was _trying_ to sound annoyed with me.

I was already stripping the uniform jacket off as I toed open the wardrobe. He sat on the end of my bed while I grabbed a dark tee shirt and my leather pants, then headed into the bathroom to get rid of the sweat and stink with a quick duck under the sonics.

It was only five, more or less, before I was back out, running a comb through my hair and giving Bones another grin. He looked so different, out of uniform — scruffy, almost seedy, my kind of people. I hadn't seen him like this since the shuttle. "Let's go."

His mouth twitched oddly, irascible gaze taking me in, but he pushed himself up and followed me down the lift and across campus to the transit station.

I sat across from him on the train, knee vibrating up and down, quizzing him about whether he played pool (yes), poker (no - which was utter bullshit), or darts (not unless I wanted my eye put out). He continued to act cranky, and I continued to let him, 'cause it seemed to make him happy. In a cranky sort of way.

So I found us a pool hall half a block away from the station, and leaned against the black wooden bar, waiting for beers while he selected a cue. I couldn't help scanning the place for trouble but it wasn't a dangerous place; I tried to let the watchfulness go and study the picture Bones made instead. Long and lean in his blue jeans and white button-down, a little stubbly at the end of the day, looking so fucking serious. He really needed a cowboy hat on.

"What are you grinnin' at?"

"Nothin'," I said sweetly, setting the beer down in front of him. His eyes narrowed just a bit before he picked it up.

"Thanks."

Normally this is where I'd be saying 'ooh, mister, I never played pool before, can you teach me the rules?' but I knew Bones'd hurt himself rolling his eyes, so I went the other way. "I hope you know pool is my game. I'm so gonna kick your ass."

"We'll see."

I laughed, and racked 'em up. He sure looked like he knew what he was doing when he made the first break, knocked a solid in the pocket, and fuck, I was going to lose. Watching him bend over like that was going to be one hell of a distraction even if I wasn't going to get any, and he was _good_. By the time he finished sinking his string of balls I'd finished most of my beer, asked his favorite poison, and ordered us a couple of shots of bourbon.

"Show me up," he said, eyebrow quirked, leaning back against the wall and tossing back the shot before taking a pull of his beer. He didn't really look relaxed yet, but I hoped we'd get him there. I knocked back my own shot, sized up the table, and let the angles and the physics take over my head. Didn't take long to sink five in a row, but the sight of his lips around the beer bottle wobbled my aim a bit on the sixth.

"Your round," I said, needing a lot more booze before my busy brain could finish letting go.

Bones gave me that long-suffering grimace, but signaled to the waitbeing for one more. I downed my fresh shot, and needled him a little about not getting another for himself, but he shook his head firmly. I shrugged; if he didn't want the hard stuff, was gonna take a lot longer to get him to let his hair down, but I ordered more beers. Then I leaned back and appreciated the show as he finished off the game, all grace and grump leaning over the table while I made all the obligatory cracks about balls and poles and holes and all. Wondering if all this pointless lust was aimed at a straight guy. What kind of woman his wife had been. What kind of games he liked to play in bed.

"If you're done watching my ass, Jim, it's your break."

I coughed, then gave him a saucy smile and slid off the barstool. The buzz was coming along nicely now; fuzzing out everything but the present, and I resolved to give him some nice views too. Except, you know, that thing with the angles and the physics that always happens when I play pool kept getting in the way. I hoped the tight pants were getting the job done.

The place got warmer and noisier, and even though I was happily concentrating on the game and finding new ways to provoke dirty looks from Bones, there was one braying voice at the next table that kept getting on my nerves. I glanced over at him and his two friends a couple of times, annoyed when his laughter broke my focus — a big fucker, with badly cut black hair. I tried to ignore him until he turned and met my eyes, and that old familiar fury/fear surged up in my veins — he was the kind of mean fuck that didn't take any provocation, would blow up for no reason at all. And he saw it in my widening eyes too, that I knew him, that I was ready for him.

Without even being aware of it, I had pivoted, squaring my hips to face him, letting my knees flex, and he responded in kind, frowning in confusion but reacting to my hackles going up without needing any other excuse. His friends came alert too, and a little corner of my brain watched to see if it was going to be fists or pool cues. My heart was racing like mad, and my dick throbbed, and the big guy dropped the stick onto the green felt and curled his fists.

" _Jim._ "

Oh, fuck. Bones. His quiet voice was urgent enough under the rattle of bar noise to make me look his way. Which was a really bad idea, because a really big fist cracked across my jaw, cut the corner of my mouth, and threw me back against the pool table.

  


#### McCoy

 _Hellfire_. I hadn't seen what set the two of them off, but the big guy was quick like a snake; I hadn't seen the swing coming or I would have kept my damn mouth shut.

I started around the table, grip shifting on the stick, and Big's two friends came forward to flank him. The bartender shouted something I couldn't make out over the ring of bystanders already forming, isolating the five of us.

Jim pushed himself back off the pool table so fast it looked like he bounced, eyes narrow and hard, glittering with a mad dark light that sent a chill down my spine. He stepped between me and the big guy, wiping a trickle of blood off his chin. He looked like a force of nature — balanced on the balls of his feet, hands up in front of him open and loose. I'd been in my fair share of fights; I could see just how fast this was going to go bad.

Then his glance slipped back to me, at my hands on the cue, and suddenly he stepped back and lifted his hands higher.

"My fault, my fault," Jim said loudly, never taking his eyes off of the other guy, pulse throbbing in his neck, in his temple.

"I apologize. Unreservedly. I don't want a fight."

Big stepped forward, crowding Jim — Jim didn't want to give ground, but he let the guy back him right up against the table anyway. His throat worked beneath a tight jaw before he spoke.

"C'mon, mister, let me buy you a round. My treat, the good stuff. You'd rather drink the good stuff than fight me, yeah?"

I didn't think it could possibly work. Big's fists were tightly clenched. But Jim flashed his best charming grin, calculated to ingratiate, and raised one hand further to signal the bartender while he lowered the other, palm up. Placating.

"Tell you what... let's do both. We'll do shots together. I'm bettin' you can wipe the floor with me doing shots, am I right?"

Big looked him up and down, and smiled the ugliest disdainful smile I'd ever seen. The guy's friends looked at each other, and the tension drained out of the room — though the stiffness in Jim's shoulders said _he_ was still on edge. Nonetheless, the crowd broke around us; most people returning to their own business, a handful following Jim as he guided his opponent to the bar without ever touching him.

I set the cue down and leaned against the table, trying to slow my own breathing, aware of people casting sidelong looks toward both of us. I wasn't any more sure what had just happened than anybody else — I felt like I'd looked through a window into Jim's world, seen some things he didn't want anyone to see. Or at least no one he was ever going to meet again. Familiar damage, the flinch of a child who's all too certain a blow is coming. Mistrustful blue eyes. I picked up my beer and drained it gratefully. Watched Jim settle on a stool, all easy smile and affable charm, enmity apparently forgotten.

I wasn't fooled. I cleared off the table for the next group and joined Jim and his new 'friend' at the bar. They already had three empty shot glasses in front of each of them. Jim reached out, slapped me on the back, and downed his fourth.

"Hey, Bones. This's Hal," he said, flipping the glass and setting it down on the bar with the others. "Five-to-one I'll go down first. Want in?"

I was going to make an acid comment about alcohol poisoning, or the odds going the wrong way, or something, but Jim turned a bit more, looked directly at me. The dangerous shine was still there in his eyes, feral and hard. Warning.

"No, thanks," I said.

Jim smirked. "Suit yourself."

Hal downed his fourth, and I wondered if I would end up carrying Jim back to the Academy — the guy had five centimeters and twenty kilos on him, easy, but I'd already figured things with Jim were never as uneven as they seemed. I leaned against the bar, ordered another beer of my own from the pained-looking bartender, and settled in to watch and wait.

By eight, Jim was slurring some outrageous story about a mongrel, his dad's Corvette, and two Iowa State Troopers, while Hal had developed a definite list to his right; one of his friends was barely keeping him on his stool while they both hung on Jim's every word. Nine and ten went down before Jim had finished; eleven was the capper. Hal slithered off his stool onto the floor.

Cred-chips changed hands while I knelt down to check Hal for alcohol poisoning. His breathing was good and his skin warm, not clammy. I told his friends to stay with him, and asked the bartender to call a cab.

"I'll pay," Jim said, breezily, from over my shoulder.

"Of course you bet on yourself."

He grinned, and didn't flinch away when I reached out to peel his eyelid back. "Course."

"You've had enough, too," I said, with a glance at the clock. "Time to get back."

"Already? But yer not...you hav'n...I didn' get you relaaaxed yet. 'S'the whole point."

I shook my head, grinning just a little. Worried, sure, especially about 'drunk' and 'relaxed' apparently being synonymous, but I just couldn't help it, the way he drawled the word. He smiled happily.

"This is as relaxed as I get, Jim. Trust me. Now," I slipped my arm around his waist, putting his arm over my shoulders and easing him off the stool, acutely aware of his warm, solid weight and the muscles sliding beneath the skin-tight pants, but put off by the odor of alcohol that clung to him. "Let's get you to bed before you pass out."

I waited for him to jump on that, guiding him toward the door and out into the night.  
"You didn' have to get me drunk to get me in bed."

A little shiver of thwarted desire ran through me. _Deflect, and change the subject, McCoy._

" _To_ bed. Get your feet under you." I pulled his arm closer around my shoulders. "Come on, Jim, you're too damn heavy to carry. You have to help. Half a block and you can sit down again."

"Right, right right. I can walk half a block when I'm drunk. I can do anything when I'm drunk!" He found some reserve of coordination, plonking each foot ahead of him with heavy deliberation, but he would've toppled over in a second if I'd let him go. He was loose-limbed, almost giggling, such a contrast to his usual focused intensity. No wonder drink was so beguiling — and dangerous — for him.

We reached the station in plenty of time, but getting down the stairs to the platform was a bit of a challenge; Jim pulled towards the benches but I kept an arm around his waist, holding him on his feet until the near-empty train pulled to a stop.

A little more shuffling got us in; I dropped into one of the forward-facing benches, hoping to minimize motion sickness, and Jim settled right against my side. I looked up at the roof of the car, arguing with myself about whether I did or didn't want him so close while I listened to the high hum of the wheels, watched the lights in the tunnel flash by. He was out, or near enough, almost drooling against me. The car swayed, his hand dropped relaxed over my knee, and I thought anxiously about train wrecks, earthquakes... enumerating all the potential disasters I could come up with.

One stop before campus I shrugged my shoulder, intentionally jostling Jim.

"Jim," I said. "Jim, wake up. Have to make it in before six, right?"

He sat up straighter, suddenly, eyes wide. "Right, yes, six, what time is it?"

"We're fine, Jim, it's half-past midnight. Just need to make sure we don't miss our stop."

"Fuck. Don't scare me like that, asshole."

Rolled my eyes at him. "So sorry."

He heaved a worried sigh, though, tugging his shirt down. Echoes of his earlier tension came back to the line of his shoulders. So much for his brief bit of release; I could only hope that he wouldn't be out seeking more drunken obliteration — or any other kind — before the weekend was over.

The train started to slow; I hooked Jim's arm around my shoulders, thought back over the way he'd gotten me through the shuttle sim, calmed that bar by sheer force of personality, changed the playing field from brawling to drinking. He _could_ channel his fighting instincts, if he had a reason, though apparently he didn't consider protecting his own hide reason enough.

I shuffled us off the train onto a cleanly-lit tile-lined platform. Jim lost his balance, stumbled into me hard and knocked us both against one of the pillars.

"Christ, Jim." I wanted to sound annoyed, maybe a little disgusted; catch the tone Gran always used with Pop when he'd come in drunk again — I don't know. But with Jim's forehead pressed against my shoulder and his weight pinning me against the cold concrete the best I could manage was concerned.

He pulled away from me, eyes bleary and worried, holding me at arm's length and searching my face intently for God only knew what — and then he vomited on my shoes. I sighed and rolled my eyes to the heavens.

"Come on, then."

I got him up the stairs and halfway to the dorm before we encountered another soul. Someone in instructor's grays was also walking across the quad, and I froze where I was. Jim grumbled something utterly incoherent into my shoulder, and the man looked over at us.

Well, we were in for it now — I recognized Captain Pike from the shuttle flight. But he wasn't frowning, just watching us with concerned curiosity.

"Captain," I said, tentatively, trying to draw myself up into something resembling attention.

"Cadet McCoy. I'm glad to see you're putting your medical skills to good use," he said, without any attempt to get a look at Jim's face, and then nodded his head once. "Carry on, gentlemen."

And he continued on his way.

 _What the hell?_ No way he didn't recognize a good curfew-breaking drunk when he saw it, not if he knew my name and specialty just by looking at my face. So what the hell indeed...but I had enough puzzles for the moment.

"Feet under you, Jim, almost there," I said, getting us moving again. I could take Jim back to his dorm, but I needed to stay with him and I wasn't sure if Ernie would be around. My room might only have one narrow bed and be barely bigger than a closet, but it still made more sense to go there. I'd wake quick enough if Jim needed something.

I just hoped we made it in before he threw up again.

  


σ


	10. Onto Private Property

#### Kirk

I woke without transition: a strange bed, morning light at the wrong angle, a warm body pinning me — and I shoved the arm off my chest with a sudden jerk.

"Whassit? Jim?"

Bones. A dorm. A door. Just Bones. He'd pushed up on one elbow, bloodshot eyes taking in my face, his hair sticking up every which way. Panting, I let my head settle back on the pillow, the crunching headache catching up with my sudden tension. Shit. How had I ended up _here_?

He watched me closely, seeing the symptoms of my hangover as surely as I felt them. "You want something for that?"

"Ugh..." I scrubbed at my face, trying to ignore the horrible taste in my mouth, heartbeat settling back towards normal now that I knew where I was. "Will it help me remember what happened after the bar?"

"No," he said, stretching out on his side, back against the wall, with his head propped up on his hand. "You threw up on me, and I hauled your sorry ass back here because you were too drunk to be left alone."

I blinked at him, and then I laughed rustily. "I'm sorry, Bones. I threw up on you?"

"Yeah, you did. But I work in an ER, so that's nothing new." He smiled, a little, but his eyes were dark. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"Train. After playin' pool, drinkin' shots. Many, many shots. How many?" I lifted my arm over my eyes, keeping the morning sun and his gaze off my face.

"Eleven. Thirteen if you count the two you did while we were shooting pool. You've got a pretty high tolerance built up." The flat statement wasn't meant to be a compliment.

"Mm. Didn't beat my record then."

"Jesus, Jim." He put his arm back across my chest; the heat of his body near mine through the thin dormitory blanket and quilt felt really good. "I don't want you going out looking to get your head caved in by guys like Hal — I don't care _who_ he reminded you of — but I don't want you courting alcohol poisoning to avoid a fight, either."

Fuck. What the hell had I said to him last night? Even drunk there were some things I knew would never come out of my mouth. But what _had_ I said? Or what had he seen? I swallowed, needing to break the silence. "High tolerance, like you said."

"That just makes you an experienced binge drinker, Jim. It doesn't grant you immunity."

"I don't usually go overboard like that. I don't like being that far out of it." I was getting distracted by the feel of his heartbeat against my side. I rolled my head towards him, letting my forearm continue to rest across my temple. His mouth was close, tempting. Maybe he could be distracted too.

"But you getting that drunk was better than me busting my knuckles on Hal's friends' heads, right? It's okay for you to get hurt, but not me?"

I smiled appreciatively. "You've got very valuable knuckles."

He sounded weary, all of a sudden. "I'd rather hit a guy with my elbow, anyway, the bones there are thicker. You're an idiot."

"I know. But you put up with me anyway." I started to touch fingertips to his warm cheek.

"You deserve better than you give yourself, Jim. You sure as hell don't deserve to go get yourself beaten down because your life is looking up. Just because you're used to something doesn't make it a _good_ thing."

All of the warmth melted into chills. "That's not what it's about." I pushed his arm and his blankets off of me all at once, swung my legs off the bed so my back was to him. Nausea and dizziness overwhelmed me before I could stand.

I heard him shift; felt him set a gentle hand on my shoulder blade. "Sure what it looks like."

"Well, it's not." My voice was deep, harsh, loud — he needed to understand this. "I go out looking for it because I _like_ it, Bones. Don't kid yourself. I am a sick fuck, I get off on pain, I can't live without it. I let people do whatever the fuck they want to me because it makes me _feel good_. I go looking for it because that's what I _am_."

"I believe you get off on the pain, Jim, I do — I've seen you shift pain to something else right in front of me. Algolagnia or masochism, that desire on its own doesn't make you sick, and it isn't all you are, not by a long shot." Algo—? I tucked the unfamiliar word away to investigate later. He sat up, his hand slid up to the base of my neck, thumb starting to rub in small circles.

"I also know you're acing all your classes, and keeping your professors on their toes, and even I'll tell you you're a great pilot. I'm pretty damn sure that you could have taken all three of them last night, without my help, but if I hadn't been there you most likely wouldn't have been fighting to win. I know that not all those old broken bones were self-inflicted nor gotten in brawls. I know you were scared letting Hal back you into a corner — and you're probably wantin' to bolt right now." The arm came over my shoulder and around my chest. "You really like letting people do what they want with you? Then lie back down."

I couldn't move. I wanted to stand, to leave, to run, to tell him it was all a mistake, but every muscle was rigid. I tasted acid in my throat, swallowed hard. He nudged me lightly toward the pillow, and I slowly let myself curl onto my side, his arm thick and solid under my neck as he eased us down. My body was pulled so tight that every breath was hard to draw — I was locked in silence, waiting for what I didn't know, but the hand on my ribcage never moved, just rested there warm and flat, like he was holding my thumping heart inside my chest.

Little by little, the panic that had come out of nowhere let me go. I realized my hands were aching, and I tried to unclench my fists.

"I'm not going anywhere," he murmured.

I closed my eyes, chills passing through me again. I brought my hands up to grip his forearm, pulling it hard against my chest, needing to press closer, feel him all around me. He set his forehead against my shoulder, his other arm coming over my side to close the embrace.

  


#### McCoy

Next time someone tried to tell me I was brilliant, I was going to point them to this moment as proof to the contrary. Weeks of piecing together clues, guessing and filtering through Jim-speak, and I had to push some of what I'd unraveled out into the open _now_ , when he was already wound tight, in the aftermath of a bad night and waking up in a strange place. Not to mention the hangover.

I'd spoken enough truth to freeze him up something terrible. Now his defenses were up, and to keep talking would just tie him in tighter knots, or send him running. Silent contact was a lot easier, and did a lot more to calm him. He clutched my arm against his chest like I'd seen him do with his pillow, like hanging on was going to keep him from flying away.

And what had been going through his head before? Eyes drifting to my mouth like he thought he should kiss me. Not because he really wanted to, or because he was afraid of me, but because I was touching him. Hadn't anyone ever just _held_ the kid before?

 _Not kid. Not your_ fucking _kid._

Another question that held its own answer.

Little by little he let himself relax, and I had some hope that him drowsing off again in my arms meant some measure of trust, but when hunger roused us later, he went on his way with cautious courtesy. I concentrated on my neglected xeno studies, as much as I could, and I fretted. Checked in with him a couple of times by comm, tried to invite him to Sunday dinner, but he evaded me with brittle, cheerful ease. Maybe I _had_ spooked him for good.

The xeno rounds on Monday went about as well as I'd expected, which is to say not very; I'd only theoretically killed one of my ten hypothetical patients by misdiagnosis. Or maybe I'd have just made her more miserable; hers was a sufficiently complicated case that it took the instructor and her attending almost half an hour to sort out where I'd gone wrong. I spent the rest of the day focused on classes or studying and tried not to wonder what Jim was up to. Tried not to wonder how that kind of damage could have happened at all, to any kid in this day and age, much less go undetected. Tried not to listen to the sneering voice that told me how hopelessly out of my depth I was with him.

I'd resigned myself to eating lunch alone when Tuesday rolled around, and didn't bother waiting out front of the mess for him. Didn't stop me from glancing up from my padd whenever someone new walked in, just in case. But he didn't show, and I told myself was probably just as well to have fouled things up sooner, rather than later. Given my track record, I would have done something to run him off eventually.

And worrying what trouble he might be planning to get himself into wasn't going to do me any good. _Wanting_ hadn't done me any good — just gotten me involved where it would have been best to keep my distance. Better to buckle down, focus on learning the things I was going to need to have any sort of career in Starfleet. The aching hollow would take care of itself, if I kept busy enough, so it didn't bear thinking about. I'd stopped looking for Jim at all by Thursday.

I did wonder if he'd also been assigned as one of Lieutenant Chapel's "projects;" if maybe he was talking to her, since he wasn't talking to me. I'd noted the three doctorates on her wall, one in psych, and hoped it wasn't too much to ask of the universe that he was. And knew, same way I always did, the dark truth.

_No counselors, no cops._

I'd promised to keep his confidence; if I asked Chapel to check up on him, he would read it as a betrayal. Would betraying his trust matter, if he'd already written me off, when I weighed protecting his secret against the damage he could do to himself? I knew what my answer _ought_ to be, but I kept wrestling with specters of Jim abandoning Starfleet altogether, vanishing into even deeper darkness.

I remembered to send a note to the scheduling supervisor at St. Frank's; it was going to be a long lonely break after finals, and I might as well cover shifts to give some of the other ER doctors time with their families during the holidays.

Friday night I was back at the hospital, weary even before I started, but more than ready to focus on other people's problems until midnight. Tanielu took one look at my face when I stepped through the doors and shook his head, which I figured was comment enough. It was a rotten shift anyway, long and hard and full of people who were either loud and ungrateful or quiet and heartbroken; either way dredging up too many memories. We had a mess of an accident come in around 2200, and I was up to my elbows in surgery for the next five hours.

I finally scrubbed out and changed near three in the morning, and trudged towards the doors with no intention of being sidetracked. My plans for the rest of the night went: train, dorm, bed, with nothing else in between. Possibly not even undressing. I wanted to ignore Tanielu's significant look towards the back corner of the nearly empty waiting room, but I caught a glimpse of Jim's tarnished bronze head, pillowed on a plastic bag where he was stretched out in rumpled civvies across four chairs.

I suppressed a groan, hoping he wasn't hurt too bad, and tried to find some hidden reserve of energy for him, but I'd used up pretty much everything I had. Even the moment of relief that came with knowing he still trusted me some wasn't enough to cut through my exhaustion.

The nauseating smell of congealed Chinese food hovered around the bag. I shook off the urge to jab a finger into Jim's shoulder, and instead said his name quietly. His head shifted, then he twisted to look up at me, squinting against the lights.

"Bones?" he said, soft and tentative.

"Yeah," I said, too weary to come up with anything else.

"Hey," he said, pushing himself upright, eyes flicking to take in my civilian clothes, Tan at the desk, the mostly empty waiting room, the chrono on the wall; his fierce awareness back to its usual intensity. I couldn't see any blood, but the crumpled bag had left a distinct pink imprint on his cheek and temple. He waved away my search for symptoms. "I'm fine...I just brought you some dinner. But it looks like you need a bed more."

I frowned at him, smart enough to recognize a peace offering for what it was, confused that he was here without needing anything after avoiding me all week. Least it wasn't a stretch to figure how he knew where I'd be; the last thing I needed was another puzzle to worry on.

He stood, scooped up the bag over one wrist, and took my elbow to steer me towards the door, all in one motion. We went out into the night, and he swung his arm to arc the bag into an outdoor trash can. Ridiculous. Nobody ought to have that kind of grace at three in the morning.

"What?" he said, and I realized I must have grumbled something aloud.

"Nothin', sorry. Talkin' to myself."

He grinned and slung his arm around my shoulders, back to being the big puppy I'd been getting used to, as if the almost-fight with Hal and his little panic attack the next morning had never happened; as if he'd never up and vanished on me. I just didn't have the energy to even start trying to figure out what any of this meant.

Maybe I should've shrugged him off, made my own tired way to the station like I did after any other long shift — but his touch felt good and there was something to be said for just putting one foot in front of the other, knowing he'd get us where we needed to go.

  


σ


	11. Chasm Ahead

#### Kirk

Bones leaned on me, chin drooping, letting me guide him around obstacles on the street and up to the station. He always acted like the perpetual bags under his eyes had something to do with the six years between my age and his, instead of the fact that he worked too hard and didn't sleep enough, but tonight he looked wrecked, barely able to keep his eyes open.

After a restless, lonely, fucked up week, I'd decided I could bluff my way forward with Bones and stop being so restless, lonely and fucked up. I'd arrived with hot food near the end of his shift, ready to tease a smile out of him, or eat crow if I had to, but the desk nurse told me he'd just gone into emergency surgery. That had been hours ago, on top of the normal shift he'd worked beforehand and the normal school day he'd had before that, and whatever crazy studying he'd done the night before. Couldn't guess whether me no-showing for lunch twice in a row would have added anger or worry on top of that — probably relief, but it still meant he'd been reading over lunch instead of "wasting time" enjoying his meal or taking a real break.

I'd wanted to watch Bones react when he came out the doors and saw me there, figure out whether he was glad or ticked or what, but I'd fallen asleep. And what he thought about me didn't seem important anymore; I needed to get him back to his bed before he fell over.

The late-night sidewalks were nearly deserted beneath gentle street lights that brightened gradually when they sensed our approach, but there were a handful of other late-night travelers in the station. None of them gave us a second glance.

"Step up, that's it, keep moving. You can sleep once we're on the train."

"Unlikely."

"I bet you'll be out before we hit the next station."

"There's a bet you'd lose," he grumped, though the effect was less bitter than he wanted given the jaw-cracking yawn that swallowed his last word.

"Haven't you learned not to bet against me yet?" I nudged him forward as the train pulled up, pushed him through the opening doors into an empty car; felt fragmentary sense-memories of leaning on him on the ride back from the pool hall. I picked a side-facing bench, so there was room for him to stretch out. Not that he would, not on his own.

"You know how many things can go wrong on something with this many moving parts?" he bitched. I knew him too fucking well.

"Now you're just being contrary." The train started to move; I put a firm hand on his shoulder and tilted him sideways, so that his head was pillowed on my thigh, and started to rub into the trapezius before he could pull away or fight back.

"Just sayin'. I'll bet my paranoias over you any day. _Christ._ " I felt a hard knot under my fingers, but he was pushing back into the rub, not pulling away. Didn't say another word, just gave him a minute or two of deep muscle massage over the worst of the knots in neck and shoulders, easing into lighter strokes as his posture settled — and to go by his breathing, I won my bet about half a minute before we slowed for the next station. I smoothed the hair back behind his ear with one hand, used the other to keep the inertia of stops and starts from shifting him too much, and managed to keep him out until we got back to the Academy platform.

"Hey. Hey, Bones. C'mon, wakey-wakey." I pushed him up to a sitting position, ready to just sling his arm over my shoulders. But " _time to pay up_ " turned out to be the magic words.

"I'll pay the piper when I'm damn good and ready," he muttered, then scrubbed his face and glared at me. "You cheat."

"With my Amazing Soporific Fingers? Or do you think I defeated your 'Many Moving Parts' paranoia with your 'Taking Your Atoms Apart' paranoia?" He was shuffling out of the station under his own power well enough now, but I kept a guiding hand on his shoulder just in case.

"What?" His befuddled scowl and red eyes reminded me of the day we'd met, all wild expressions and crazy eyebrows. Probably not the best time to remind him of his horror of transporter beams.

"Never mind," I said lightly, just happy to have our cranky banter back. "Wouldn't want you to have nightmares when we get you all tucked in."

"I am perfectly capable of seein' myself to bed, you know."

"You fell asleep on a _train_ , Bones, I'm not letting you out of my sight until you're parked in your own dorm."

He huffed; not quite a laugh — I wondered if he ever actually did laugh right out loud. "You might have a point there."

I walked with him through the balmy night air. I'd let go of his shoulder, not wanting to look like we'd been out partying, though I knew Bones had dispensation to be off campus for his late shifts.

We made it to the dorm without running into anyone dangerous; he slouched back against the wall of the lift, eyes mostly closed. I steered him into his room, then hung back, uncertain, watching him shuck blindly out of shoes and his top layer of clothes. I was almost certain he was asleep by the time he collapsed into the bed in his shorts and undershirt.

I told the computer to cancel any wake-ups he had scheduled for the morning, then pulled the hand-stitched quilt up and stood over the bed, looking down at him. There was no reason to stay. He wasn't drunk, didn't need anyone to watch over him. And I didn't want to tempt him to pick up the truncated conversation from last week if he woke and found me here. But I couldn't make myself leave.

I shed my own jacket and shoes, finally, and settled onto the bed, heartened that he neither moved nor mumbled. Little by little I stretched out alongside with my back against him, even pulled his arm over my chest, without disturbing him. Told myself he could hardly object; he'd been the one who wanted to hold me like this last week.

I lay in the dark, listening to him breathing. His body radiated heat, almost uncomfortable where we were pressed together. Inevitably, my dick started to take an interest, which led back to the bad doctor fantasies I'd been trying to obliterate. My stomach sank with shame as fragments of daydreams tumbled through me.

...Bones, using his teeth on my nipple.

I squeezed my eyes closed, cock hardening. I couldn't think this way anymore, not now that I knew him, not now that I had some idea how much tougher everything would be on my own. A week without him, trying to keep myself focused just on the present, had been enough.

 _You don't need this_ , I told myself.

...Bones, growling filth in my ear.

I'd been a good friend tonight, I'd taken care of him. Things could be simple, clean, between us.

_Don't do this. Don't fuck this up._

...Bones, pinning me to the ground with an arm up behind my back, thrashing my ass or thrusting fingers up inside me.

I swallowed back the noise in my throat. No, he was good, he was gentle; he didn't have that kind of violence in him, couldn't stand to see anyone hurt.

 _Find another way_ , he said. There's got to be another way.

...Bones, squeezing my cock, watching me squirm and suffer.

I pressed my legs together, pinching my balls, trying to will the erection away. He didn't want me, or if he did, he didn't dare get messed up in my malfunctions — which made perfect sense given how much shit he'd guessed without me telling him.

_Wrong, wrong, wrong!_

Or maybe not. "Algolagnia", he'd said. Something physically in the brain, the nerves, not just a fucked-in-the-head thing.

...Bones, snarling in disgust, sinking a fist into my belly.

What would it be like, to feel that adrenaline spike with him? Fight or flight kicking in, that rush of pleasure-tangled pain, knowing there was no escape. I'd gasp, I'd tremble, I'd hit that wall where I couldn't fight anymore.

_He would hate you if he knew what you were dreaming about._

...Bones, seizing my hair, pulling my head back, biting my throat.

No fucking _point_ wondering what it would be like. That's not how it would go.

_Find another way._

...Me, lying limp and peaceful in his arms, while he undid what he'd done to my body.

My teeth clenched. This was fucked up; this wasn't some nerve disorder. What the fuck did I think I wanted, needed from him, anyway? What did I deserve?

...Bones _leaving_. Bones turning his back, shutting the door, walking away.

That's how it would play out. I forced myself to face that, and my dick wilted at last.

 _Maybe what_ you _want doesn't matter anymore._

I lay very still, trying to gauge if his breathing had changed while I lay against him, too aroused and too tense. I eased out from under his arm, tucked the quilt under his chin — had to freeze for a moment when he tossed his head restlessly, lower lip twitching toward some sleepy word — but then he nuzzled deeper into his pillow.

I stood over his bed in the near-dark, clenched teeth and tripping heart aching for something I would never have, and retreated to the silent safety of my own dorm and Ernie's disdain.

  


#### McCoy

I woke up late Saturday morning, confused by the angle of the light before I realized Jim must have shut off my alarm. Couldn't decide if I should curse or bless him — and trust him to just show up out of the blue at the back end of a rotten shift. Trying to make amends, I figured, without us having to talk about what sent him haring off. There was a part of me that still wanted to be annoyed with him, and in the cold light of day him knowing my schedule without asking was a little disconcerting. But, yeah, dinner'd been a fine gesture on its own, if I hadn't been so tired he'd felt I needed an escort home, and maybe it had been a lonely week without him.

So, after a shower, I sent him a note asking if he wanted to meet for lunch, half-expecting him to beg off again, hoping in some dark corner of my soul that he wouldn't. I was surprised as hell when he showed up, though he was quiet and high strung; we kept to safe subjects and easy banter.

End-of-term exams loomed ahead of both of us, and between studying and intermittently making notes on the conference proposal for Chapel, I didn't see Jim again until lunch on Tuesday, where I got another brief flash of that honest smile. Damn fool kid.

I'd taken to getting up earlier than normal and taking a hard run around the campus perimeter to burn off some of the tension I was carrying. I knew Jim had to be stressed; I doubted there was a cadet that wasn't suffering from end-of-term strain, and there was a lot of other stuff churning under the surface of his psyche just now. But he really seemed to _want_ to check his more self-destructive needs. He came over to my room some evenings to escape Ernie and read quietly at the desk, only a rapidly tapping stylus indicating he might be restive. I fully expected him to push to go out over the weekend and was a little worried when he didn't; I was starting to see how things might have gotten so explosive after midterms that he'd landed in the ER.

Juggling my worry about the tests with my worry for Jim was a pain in the ass. A dozen times I started trying to find words for the questions I wanted to ask, but I chickened out every time, never able to envision how it could end in anything but upset or anger, and him running again — and one or both of us failing the exams that would give us another quarter to figure this out.

So I wasn't sure how to feel when he showed up at my door a week later, after my Tuesday afternoon final, all wound up and guilty looking and unhappy — but not yet bloody, thank goodness, unless he'd hurt himself chewing the inside of his lip like that.

"Bones, I need you to go somewhere with me, okay? Just go with me and bring me home, that's all."

I snagged my jacket off the chair. "Where are we going?"

"Just a place I found in the Castro. No drinking, no fighting, no staying out late, I promise." He didn't want to tell me. Which meant he figured I wouldn't like the answer. But if he was making an effort to rein himself in, then maybe I was getting through to him in some small way. I followed along in his wake, bemusedly wondering what kind of trouble he'd left out of his list.

He paid for a cab, and we rode in silence to a neighborhood of colorful but shabby storefronts, away from the more fabulous and fashionable main drag. He licked his lips, glanced at me, then led the way into one of the shops, a narrow hole in the wall with a display case full of jewelry and a wall full of tattoo designs. My eyebrows went up.

The artist was quite talented, and I supposed — given Starfleet's naval origins — a tattoo would at least be traditional. Wouldn't have been my first choice but then again I'm not much for courting any number of blood-borne pathogens.

"So what's it gonna be?" I scanned the designs, hoping he wasn't going to try to shock me and the rest of the world with his artistic tastes, but he was watching my face instead.

"P-piercing." His fingers drifted across his chest, gesturing vaguely at one nipple. And why did I expect traditional out of Jim Kirk? I'd surprised him again; he was all braced for an argument I wasn't going to give him, wide steel-blue eyes trying to read my face.

The woman behind the counter watched us, her dark eyes carefully neutral. Probably trying to sort out our relationship. I wished her luck.

"Fine, Jim. But I want to see their equipment — especially their autoclave — before I let anyone near you with a needle." Or, maybe I'd just say something that would make her think she knew _exactly_ what was going on. Jim's blush probably wasn't helping, but damned if I was going to let him take more of a risk than he had to.

She introduced herself as Lensaa, and let me back behind the curtain without fuss, leaving Jim scanning through the jewelry. The room was clean enough and well-lit, the second-hand dentist's chair covered in an incongruously child-like pastel-dinosaur patterned paper. The only thing that worried me was the archaic sterilization equipment, but despite its age I could see the machine was in good repair. I considered for a minute, but the only alternative I could see was offering to do this for Jim myself, and fragile as things were between us I wasn't sure I wanted to go there. Most anything he could pick up here I could dose him for, and better to put him in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing, I decided. She started to gather her tools, disinfectant wipes, topical anesthetic.

"He's not going to let you use that," I said ruefully, pointing at the cream. Half the point of Jim getting the piercing was the pain of broken flesh — I was certain of that.

Her lips pursed. "I will need you to hold him then. They always say they can sit still, but they cannot."

_Oh, deeper and deeper, McCoy._

"Ma'am, this one will stay put."

Her finely plucked eyebrows raised. I shrugged at her, and she considered me for a moment before shrugging back. I followed her out to the shop proper, where Jim was studying a row of hoops. She pulled his selections out of the case and laid the plastic cards on the counter.

"Which do you think?" he asked, tilting his chin toward me.

"Hell if I know, Jim," I said, suddenly struck by a memory of Jocelyn holding up two pair of earrings and asking me _exactly_ the same question. Almost down to the inflection. And it wasn't funny, God damn it, the whole situation wasn't funny. I looked to the only other person in the room for help, but she was also looking at me expectantly. "Oh, for God's sake."

I leaned over to look; both were simple hoop-and-ball D-shaped constructions, one flat grey, one a deep blue I figured couldn't be natural.

Lensaa reached around my arm and set a wicked nail below the gray jewelry. "Titanium," she said, standing much closer than I liked, then pointed to the blue. "Anodized niobium. You have allergies?"

"Yes." He snorted. "Either of these should be fine. Pick one, Bones."

I wanted to look him in the eyes, trying to figure if there was some subtext here I was missing. He wasn't cooperating. It had to be just a choice about appearances. No more significance than that. With a sigh I finally set my finger on the card holding the dark blue one, the one that looked like the mad light I'd seen in his eyes in the bar.

"This one." The one that wasn't the same metal Jocelyn and I had selected for our wedding bands.

  


σ


	12. Grinning at the Wind

#### Kirk

I tapped fingers impatiently against the display counter as Lensaa took my credits for the ring and the piercing. Still hard to believe Bones wasn't complaining, but I'd take it. I'd been vibrating for days, I couldn't sleep, and though I doubted this act would help in the long term, maybe this was another way: something that wouldn't get me or Bones in trouble, or screw up end-of-term for either of us. Maybe this would be enough.

She took me back through the curtain, and to my surprise he followed a few steps behind. I needed him there to make sure I'd get home, not get sucked into the pain and go chasing something more. But I didn't think he needed to see me at my worst. "You don't have to watch this, Bones."

"Yeah, I do," he said with a grimace. What the hell? My breath quickened at the idea of him watching me squirm and suffer, little bits of my dark fantasy come to life, but what the hell was in it for him? He didn't give me any clues, just pulled up a stool opposite her work area.

I swallowed, unbuttoned and stripped off my loose plaid shirt, and sat back in the chair between them, thumbs nervously cracking each knuckle in turn. She dropped the chosen jewelry into the autoclave and put on her gloves, stripping open the packaging on a new needle. Both the adrenaline and the fantasy were running good and strong now, and I breathed deep and fast, looking at Bones, drinking in the curve of his cheek, the worried crease between his eyebrows, the smooth pout of his lower lip. I knew I must look fucking strange to him, fucking loopy already, but he just looked steadily back, golden-greenish eyes bright in the unforgiving light. I inhaled sharply, but didn't move, when she swabbed disinfectant over my left nipple.

"No anesthetic?" she confirmed.

"No, nothing."

Bones gave a tiny little sigh, lips tightening.

"You have to be very still, as the needle goes through. He says you can do this?"

I nodded. So strange, that he'd tell her so, that he thought he knew. Strange, too, to know what was coming. I mean, I always knew _pain_ was coming but never like this, the exact where and when. I was primed, cock already twitching in anticipation. She gave me a chance to look at the big, hollow needle, and then she stepped in with shiny forceps to pull the nipple taut. I turned back to look into those hazel-green eyes, centering myself on the solar flare of gold around his pupils. Her fingers were firm and deliberate and the first prick was tiny before spreading fire swallowed it up and I held my breath to keep from gasping or hyperventilating and ruining it, pain and pleasure crashing through my system like a summer hailstorm. It felt like the needle was passing through the whole pectoral muscle, and I was fully hard in an instant, wanting so much more.

I tried to hold still, but my fingers splayed out spastically on the arm of the chair. His hand gripped mine, and the touch of his warm, dry skin felt _so_ good. I felt his eyes on me, and I could feel my face flushing, and my neck, and my chest.

"Now we put the ring in." Acid pleasure pulsed from her fingers; she maneuvered the D-ring in the path of the needle, pushing it smoothly through flesh that had been whole just a minute ago. My cock throbbed violently; my whole chest burned.

"Done," she said, stepping back, and I let myself shudder and gasp, my back arching up off the chair. Bones squeezed my hand even tighter. He was watching, witnessing, and his gaze heightened everything I felt until I almost couldn't contain myself anymore.

But he didn't ask if I was okay, didn't make any of the soothing noises I'd heard when he was fixing me up in the ER or his room. I opened my eyes, panting, focusing on him again gradually. The worry was still there, but his eyes held grudging acceptance. He gave me a slight nod, a quirk of the eyebrow and the corner of his mouth that I read as understanding. Another flush of confused pleasure ran through me.

I felt her near again, and Bones glanced up, his free hand suddenly between my chest and the regenerator she held.

"Don't," he said. "I'll take care of him." My heart skipped.

She shrugged, and held out a box of medical tissues.

"Not exactly what I meant," he grumbled, taking one to clean up the minor spots of blood welling on my chest. The pain flared under his light touch, and I moaned, giddy.

"No sex in my shop," Lensaa said, calmly, before turning to strip her gloves off into the orange biohazard bin by the door.

"No worries, ma'am," Bones said, gruffly, but he definitely blushed, and I grinned breathlessly at him, imagining him stripping my pants down and hitching up my thighs to take me in the chair. He yanked his gaze away from my face, to where she had knelt down to rummage in a cabinet. She cast a look over her shoulder at him that I couldn't quite read. He disentangled his fingers from mine, tossed the tissue after her gloves, held my shirt out to me without meeting my eyes. She gave a soft satisfied grunt and came up holding a dusty paper pamphlet.

"Aftercare, the old way," she said, holding the instructions out to Bones; he thanked her and tucked them in his back pocket. I pulled on my shirt slowly, left it unbuttoned for the moment, and slid out of the chair, enjoying the light-headedness from all the endorphins. The two of them followed me out to the front door, probably having a whole 'nother conversation of eyebrow raises and shrugs while I commed for a cab. I smiled happily at Bones — no blood on my teeth this time, just that sweet floating calm as we waited on the sunlit sidewalk.

I didn't really need his help to get into the cab but I liked the way he gripped my arm anyway, and climbing in did all sorts of fun things to the newly pierced skin that made me even happier, and forced me to lift my hips and adjust myself before I sat. I leaned against him once we were moving, and he draped a protective arm around my shoulders.

He was strong and solid and I just wanted him to hold me like this forever. Well, not _just_. I snickered a little to myself, and he gave me his favorite exasperated look, without comment. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the scent and the feel of him until the cab pulled up in front of his dorm.

"Button your shirt," Bones said, taking advantage of my distraction to pay for the ride. I followed him up the walk and into the lobby, and the shirt rubbed raw blossoms of pain across my chest and I was starting to breathe a little heavily again by the time we got in the lift and fuck it.

Fuck it.

I wrapped my hands around the back of his neck and pulled him hard against me and kissed him fiercely and didn't give him a chance to talk until his arms had melted around my waist and I could feel his erection pressing against mine, and he had a fraction of a second to look into the challenge in my eyes before the door slid open.

  


#### McCoy

"Dammit, Jim," I growled, low in my throat; all my worries, warnings and words to the wise melting away. I wanted this — wanted some small piece of the devastating passion in his heated gaze, wanted _Jim_. Tired of holding myself back, and maybe a little grateful he'd succeeded where I'd failed and found some other way to scratch at least part of his itch. I grabbed his upper arm hard and pulled him in my wake down the empty hallway.

The door to my room slid closed and Jim's hands tangled in my hair again, pulling me in for another breath-stealing kiss. No finesse; it had been a long time and I was caught up in my own sudden urgent need, my fingers sliding up beneath his untucked shirt to grip just above his hips, using my weight to pin him against the wall, knee between his legs. We pushed and shoved against each other, still kissing, tongues warm and heavy. He keened hungrily into my mouth when my chest pressed against the new piercing, and I had to see his eyes; I pulled back just enough to slide my hand up between our bodies, stroking my thumb firmly across the areola above the offended nipple.

Heat-glazed, electric blue, desperate under eyelids slack with lust: his gaze could burn me.

"More. _More!_ " he demanded. His hands clawed up my back, trying to pull me right up against him again.

I leaned in and kissed him again, slower but no less fierce, still stroking above the piercing, keeping our bodies just that little bit apart, using the hand on his hip to keep him there, applying enough force to bruise. Varying the pressure of my caress until he moaned again, that same sound he'd made when I'd cleaned him up back in the shop, pure sex. And then I stepped back enough to strip off my shirt. Needing to feel him against me again. Wanting more. Consequences be damned.

He was peeling his clothes off just as fast, boots, jeans, shirt hitting the ground in rapid order, and he sprawled naked onto the bed, elbows underneath him propping up his shoulders, knees hanging off the end and splayed apart, dick hard and standing up pretty as the rest of him. His mouth was wet, open, panting, waiting. Fresh red blood trickled down his ribcage and he shook his head impatiently as my eyes caught on it.

"Jim," I said, standing between his knees, my voice raw, still in my jeans. Two instincts warring within me.

"Fix me later. I want you _now_." Commanding.

Oh, _Hell_. I ran my thumb up the thin line of blood, smearing it, leaning in to capture his mouth again. Stretching out on top of him, letting his strong lean body bear most of my weight, grinding our dicks together. He whimpered and pushed back hard against me, fingers hooking under my waistband. I broke the kiss to nip and lick along his jawline. Shifted onto my elbow to scratch at the other nipple; he lifted his head to bite and suck at my collarbone, and I didn't recognize the noise he tore out of my throat.

"Tell me, Jim..." I managed, question only half-formed.

"Nngwhat..." His nails raked across my back, hard enough to raise welts; I hissed and grabbed the wrist, pinning it to the bed, trying to get my two surviving brain cells to talk to each other. He grinned up at me breathlessly, squirming his hips beneath me. I felt the tendons in his wrist stretch and tighten under my grip.

"Need to know what you want..."

Ragged laughter. "Anything. _Anything_." Reckless, giddy eyes. "Fuck me, or let me fuck you. Or I'll blow you. Or we can just...keep on...like this...." He was rocking, rubbing my dick forward and back, and my jeans were unbearable now but so was the idea of separating enough to get out of them. I let go of his wrist, my head spinning with images, options...too many choices.

_You look good down there_.

I slid down his body, hating the loss of his heat but suddenly certain what I wanted, hands and tongue following each other over his quivering belly. I caught the base of his erection in the circle of my finger and thumb, my mouth sliding down the crease of his thigh. Intentionally scraped my stubbled cheek along the tender skin there, turned my head, my nose filled with the musky scent of him. Curled my tongue along the underside of his balls.

"Oh, _fuck_ ," he said, fingers raking down into my hair, but not demanding, not yet. I stroked the tip of my tongue up the pulsing vein underneath his cock. Salty, and slick, and clean, and _Jim_. I swept my flattened tongue over the head, tasting bitter precome along with all those other flavors, and drew Jim in deep.

He groaned, arching up to meet me and I used my tongue in earnest to please him, to control how deep he went, still holding the base of his cock. Stroked and pinched at his inner thigh, letting him set the pace, his grip on my hair firmer, just the right side of uncomfortable.

I dropped my hand to my fly, worked my aching dick free enough that pants and underwear were no longer agony. Hollowed my cheeks, listening to his filthy wonderful mouth rolling with curses as his head tossed on the bed. Had to know — stroked my free hand back up along his stomach, catching in the coarse hair along the way. Felt the metal of the piercing, the eloquent shiver that went through Jim's body even before I cautiously pinched and rolled his nipple lightly between my fingertips.

The strangled " _fuck"_ I expected, the way his body stiffened and jolted I expected, but I wasn't quite ready for him to come, not so suddenly or so noisily, not just from the stab of pain. His fists clenched hard in my hair, holding me still, and I held lips tight around him, letting him slide and thrust and spasm, letting everything pool in my mouth until he went still. I released his dick, swallowed hard and fast, and he whimpered helplessly.

I pushed his wrists gently, making him let go of my scalp. Rested my forehead against his leg, catching my breath, still aching and hard. Jim was lying utterly still, hands palm up where they'd fallen by his sides. Finally gathered myself enough to get up off the floor, knees cracking, kicked my jeans the rest of the way off, and stretched out on the bed next to him. Kissed his slack mouth, expecting him to be going or already gone in sleep, half-resigned to taking care of myself. But after a few moments those ocean-blue eyes and that dazzling sweet smile found their way back to me out of his private fog. I had to smile back, bringing my hand up to stroke his cheek. He rolled toward me so we were both on our sides, and I leaned in, brushed my nose against his, a whine escaping my throat when he gripped my erection.

" _Christ_." I was so damned close. My eyes slid closed, hand covering his. His thumb and forefingers made a hard ring around me, just tight enough, and he pumped hard and quick, his little finger skimming just over the surface of the corona with each stroke and goddamn, goddamn, _goddamn_. Too hard, too fast, too much, but there was no resisting his controlling touch and the orgasm built until everything cracked open and I was making guttural animal noises that I couldn't curb, sliding down into limp, shuddery bliss.

  


σ


	13. Full Speed Ahead

#### Kirk

Woke up slow, for once, curled on my side with Bones pulled up against my chest. I hadn't slept so solidly in ages, but trying to press closer against the warm back in front of me sent a jab of pain through my chest, displacing the quiet throb that had been growing stronger and stronger as I drifted up from the depths.

I took a slow breath, trying to keep the thrill that ran through me from quickening my breathing or tensing my muscles. Bones had given in! He had wanted me after all, and he'd looked into my eyes and _smiled_ , a little, watching me bleed and whimper. That made my brain skitter strangely. He'd seen _sick and weird_ in person — at least the shiny sterile version — and he'd stuck around, held on for the ride afterward. He was still here with me, solid and real against my naked body: planes of wonderfully variable skin (sun-weathered or underbelly-soft, child-smooth or man-hairy, almost hot or almost cool), over curves of dormant muscle, over long and lanky bones.

I tried to savor both the pain and the warmth of holding him, balancing the opposing sensations in a spiky-sweet blend like chili and chocolates — but the pleasure was cut by the apprehension crawling up my spine. Too bizarre, to be here with him in the gray pre-dawn light; staying the night wasn't something I did. But then, fucking me wasn't something Bones did.

Cold, gnawing instinct told me to get the hell out. Yesterday had been a weird trip for both of us. I'd gotten an answer to a lot of my questions about him — and a few I hadn't asked yet — but I knew Bones and he'd have to get a little freaked about it once his dick wasn't involved. We both had exams; it would be so much easier if I just slid my arm out from underneath his, eased off the bed and out the door.

So why didn't I move? Why did I wait and wait as the light got brighter, and his breathing got shallower, and my jaw clenched tighter?

His thumb brushed over the back of my hand, and my apprehension contracted into a tight knot.

"You think this is going to work?" he asked, voice rough with sleep. My heart jumped; he sounded so matter-of-fact. Not freaked.

"Work?" I said faintly.

"Keep you from goin' out lookin' to get your head caved in. S'what it's for, right?"

I exhaled soft and slow, trying to rein in my surge of adrenaline. I wished I could tell him what he wanted to hear.

"I don't know. For a while. Until it heals, at least."

"Good. Give us time to figure somethin' else out, then."

_Us?_

Hope fluttered under my ribs, and I didn't know what to do with it. I blinked, pressed my cheek hard against his shoulder. My tongue wetted dry lips.

"You're — this, it's a level of weird you can live with, then?"

He sighed. "Not as weird as you think it is, Jim."

"Liking the jewelry, no. Liking the pain..." I shrugged, smiling a bit into his trapezius muscle as I squeezed him. He'd learned exactly how much my body liked the pain, last night.

He curled his hand around mine, squeezed back. "You really think I was talking about your jewelry? This's all about tryin' to reach some kind of calm, right? Quiet your mind for a while?"

His warmth stirred tingles across my skin, and the scent of sex lingered faintly in the air. I wasn't sure how to answer; he wasn't wrong, but the need had always seemed more complicated. "Yes..." I said, finally.

"Yes, but." He sighed. "I'm guessin' you know all about endorphins and such?"

"Yeah, I know; threat response, fight or flight reaction, the production of natural opiates. Self-medication with endogenous chemicals." A silent snort; surprised, or amused, that I knew the jargon? "I know why it helps. I just don't know why I seem to need it sometimes, when everyone else seems to manage with beer and fucking."

"There's synthetic endorphins, maybe some other options we can try, that might take that edge off." I shifted restlessly, trying to ease the arm that was pinned between us. Bit by bit, the pale gray light was brightening the room. He took a breath, paused. "As for the why, we can figure out the underlying stuff when we have more time to talk. Right now, we just need to finish the term without you ending up back down in the Tenderloin or at St. Franks, all right?"

"I can do that," I said with another squeeze, hoping I was right. Hoping things wouldn't fall all to shit after he went home for the holidays. Rubbing up close against him was bringing other thoughts to the forefront, anyway — but the alarm sounded and we both jumped.

"Dammit. Alarm: off," he said, and we sat up, still naked, the fresh wound spiking pain through me as I moved. He ran a hand through the rumpled haystack of his hair; I watched his eyes, mossy green in the soft light as they flicked over my body and back to my face, but I still couldn't read him. "Make sure you keep that nipple clean, and go get in your damn reds before someone catches you out of uniform."

I sighed, following him off the bed. Taking exams had never been less appealing. And then Bones caught my face in his hands and kissed me lightly on the forehead, then more firmly on the lips.

"I'll see you here after class."

I blinked at him, and thought maybe I saw a bit of a flush before he grabbed his robe up in front of him and headed for the bathroom. I stared at the broad span of his retreating shoulders: soft pale skin with a sparse constellation of freckles and moles scattered across it, layered with lean muscle that never showed beneath a uniform. A few faint red meteor-streaks lingered where my fingernails had raked him.

The bathroom door closed, and I got dressed in a daze, ignoring the varying sharp and dull pains the piercing radiated through me as I moved. I stood waiting for a moment to see if he was coming out before I took off, but the clock was ticking and tests were waiting; with heart still thumping, I slid out the door and jogged back to my room.

  


#### McCoy

I leaned on the counter in the bathroom, listening to Jim collect his clothes, looking myself in the eye as long as I could stand. Letting the cool air and the cold floor under my feet turn down the reckless _want_ that still pulsed through me. I was damn surprised — and yes, all right, pleased — that I hadn't woken up alone, or to Jim slipping out. Couldn't help wondering if or how often the kid actually slept with a conquest. Knew he didn't stay with the people he provoked into assaulting him; how could he?

I scrubbed myself hard in the shower, got dressed, tossed the quilt and bedding in the cleaner. I didn't need the morning run I'd been using to calm my nerves the last couple of weeks — orgasm always has been a great stress reliever. Instead, I let the computer quiz me on the mnemonics I'd need for the theoretical today while I stretched out stiff muscles. Only I had trouble concentrating on the words; nothing I did could keep my mind from bouncing back to Jim.

I was a little less confused than I had been about his itch. Knew Jim didn't understand why I'd wanted to be there during the piercing, but I'd had to _see_ for myself. Same reason I don't trust a biobed to tell me everything. I should have recognized the endorphin-seeking behavior before. The powerful hormones would give him that calm he craved — and I suspected that Mister Intensity didn't know many other ways to reach for that — all the while the pain was burning up the wrong channels into his pleasure centers.

I'd contributed last night; left a dark band of broken capillaries where I'd grabbed his upper arm to haul him into the room, a thumbprint above his hip. And that was what I was struggling with, as I gathered up my boots and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the carpet, hearing Pop's inescapable voice.

_Goddamn it, boy, what the hell were you thinking? Were you using that brain of yours at all?_

Having sex with Jim was a line I hadn't intended to cross, but I had to admit I'd opened the door to the possibility the night I'd decided he needed a friend more than he needed a doctor. Holding him in my arms the morning after, that hadn't been about sex either, but about comfort and affection he'd badly needed.

But getting rough — I wanted to tell myself I'd gotten carried away by his demanding desire, the power of his reactions. Problem was, I'd been just as turned on by it as he had; and I didn't have any goddamned clue what to do with that.

And there was still the element that he thought there was something _wrong_ with him, that he _deserved_ to be hurt, which was a serious problem and one I had no solutions for yet.

I grimaced, shook myself guiltily, and turned back to getting my boots on.

What was done was done. Besides, even if Jim showed up tonight, it didn't mean what he was really after was that kind of intimacy with me — not without some fresh pain to get him going, anyway. Same as the first time he'd come on to me, really, fired up over his own kinks and me being the nearest available sentient biped. No sense in worrying about a next time that wasn't likely to happen.

Only....

 _Anything_ , he'd said, and the memory sank my stomach more'n the reality had. Because now I had time to think. Because he'd meant _anything_ — whatever'd come to mind, any dark desire I had hidden in me. Which, okay, the kid trusted me, but...

He made the same wild offer to people he didn't trust, all the time. And that? Scared the hell out of me. Scared me worse than anything I'd seen from him yet.

My padd waited for me on the desk, full of information my brain was supposed to have absorbed by now. I wished, miserably, that it held any sort of answers to the dilemma I was facing. I slid it towards me, hesitated, told the computer that "Kirk, James T." was allowed to access this room until further notice — then left the room behind before I could change my mind.

What if he _did_ come back for more? What was I going to do? It was an intimidating question. I wasn't sure I could give him the _anything_ he wanted, wasn't even sure I could hold him, help him, stop him from seeking out the worst the world had to offer...

The dark little voice in the back of my mind — the one I hated, the one that never _shut up_ and got especially loud when things were going well — kept insisting things would probably work out better for both of us if he went haring off again like he had after Hal. Only I knew I couldn't let him this time, even if seesawing back and forth with him was going to tear me open again in places that hadn't really healed.

Despite the hope trying to rise up in my chest, I knew this couldn't last; either I would let him down, do something to screw things up, or Jim would find his feet, go off looking for something better.

I already knew Jim would have agreed with Joce on more than a few of the things that had destroyed our marriage: I worked too much, slept too little, spent too much time tending to too many strangers instead of being at home taking care of my own... and I let all my failings show themselves in my prickly attitude. Jim might be amused now by what he saw as a grouchy "act", but that wouldn't last either.

I set out across a campus still damp with fog, too wound up to stop and eat, and arrived at the classroom a half hour too early, Pop still making all kinds of noise in my head.

_Focus on your work, boy, and don't borrow trouble. Don't waste time on things you can't change,_

A rare piece of good advice. I settled in with my padd and my notes and tried to concentrate on my tasks for the day instead of letting my mind run itself in circles over what was going to happen with Jim. Either I'd see him after today's exams, or I'd have to go hunting for him, but there was no predicting which and no sense burning that bridge before I got to it. When the instructor finally walked up to the front of the room, severe in his grays, I forced myself to shift mental gears and leave the uncertain future to its own shadowed, twisting ways.

  


σ


	14. Downshifting

#### Kirk

What a weird fucking morning. I went back to my dorm giddy and dazed; ignored (and was ignored by) Ernie, slid into my uniform in a blind rush, and made it into my history class just in time.

I answered the exam questions in quick succession. I hadn't been worried about this one but I struggled to sit still and concentrate, caught between the twinges in my chest, the breathless memory of Bones watching me in the chair, and the promise of something more in the kiss that lingered on my lips. I didn't even bother to recheck my work or otherwise dawdle over turning the test in, like I normally would; just zipped through and bolted from the room.

Didn't really help, of course, just left me with way too much time on my hands before the afternoon physics exam. Too much time to think about all the things that might go wrong with Bones, tie myself in useless knots. Too much time to worry about what I did and didn't deserve. Too much time to cringe inside like a god-damned sneak, holding my breath while I pilfered some treat I hadn't earned, _knowing_ the miserable fucking itch was waiting to smack me down, just when I — when _we_ — might be able to find some alternatives.

 _Because_ I was looking for some alternatives.

So I went and did the kind of thing that only makes sense if you live in my fucked up head. I loped on over to the vacant Surak Astrophysics Hall, found an empty bathroom, and took my dick in my fist, trying to work up some new doctor fantasies. All the things I'd hated myself for wanting, the night I'd lain wakeful next to his exhausted body — I shivered, realizing that maybe not all of them were out of reach.

I'd _seen_ it — I'd seen the fucking heat in his eyes, watching me quiver and moan under his touch. He'd gone all in, wickedly turned on by my reaction to the piercing — and he'd known exactly what he was doing when he reached for my chest, used the pain to bring me off.

Panting, I leaned on the wall of the bathroom stall, stroking myself hard, letting the motion and the snug uniform do the job on my hypersensitive nipple. I let the pain and pleasure fill me up, tried not to let any of it crystallize into bad doctor, good doctor, any of that. Just Bones, his hands on me, piling sensation on sensation. No façade, no veil, no tense conversation, no trying to guess how to make him happy...friendship was complicated but sex — that I could do.

And he'd wanted it so fucking bad! Knowing what I knew about him, I was guessing he hadn't gotten any since the divorce, maybe well before. And I couldn't imagine he'd had wide experience before that — though he'd obviously learned to suck dick somewhere.

I stroked faster, remembering his mouth, hot and eager, wet and welcoming. Already plotting my payback — there was so much I wanted to do for him, with him, under him. This, I could give him uninhibitedly.

One fist squeezed my cock, the other yanked on the hem of my jacket, pulling it taut across my chest. The sharp pain blended with the memory of his fingers, his tongue...

So, yeah. Everyone else on campus was freaking out over their notes, and I was hiding in a bathroom stall, doing everything in my power _not_ to think. When my comm alarm chirped a reminder about the test, I was sprawled back on the toilet seat, wrung out, brain dead, temporarily relaxed.

I took a deep breath, straightened my uniform, and went up to the astrophysics lecture hall. Took a moment to send off a padd order for the dinner I wanted to deliver, then let the exam take over the job of distracting me for a while. My timing was good; I collected the food from the deliverybeing waiting outside the hall, and hurried back to Bones' room before my busy brain could start fretting again over _too good to be true_.

I thought I'd have a moment to straighten up after I pressed the keypad, make sure my dick wasn't advertising too much, but the door slid right open for me. Bones wasn't looking though; he knelt on the floor, rummaging through the drawer of his nightstand, looking all used up in the shades-drawn half-light. I couldn't help grinning at the sight of him.

He turned his head and cocked his eyebrow at me, sitting up on the bed with a bar of pre-packaged uber-nutritious pseudo-food substance in his hand. "Today's exams went well, I take it?"

"Uh, sure, piece of cake," I shrugged. I'd already forgotten the exams, preoccupied by the afternoon's daydreams of returning his favors, but he looked sourly at me and I reminded myself how hard he'd been studying.

"Put that away. I brought you some real food." I opened the thermal-paper bag, let him get a whiff of the steakhouse cooking and could almost see his mouth start watering. Still that moment of stupid pride, wanting to tell me we — meaning _he_ — couldn't afford it. Like I ever cared about the cost. "Two steaks, medium rare, baked potatoes with everything, corn on the cob, sautéed carrots and collards, two cold beers...did I miss anything?"

He was scowling at me in his peculiar genial-disbelief-and-disgust mode the whole time, but only one protest made it to his lips. "No beer, Jim, more exams tomorrow, remember?"

"Aw, c'mon, one beer each isn't..." I sighed. "Never mind. We'll make do with water or whatever else you've got here."

He shook his head again, this time with a reluctant smile and a skeptical eyebrow making opposite arcs, but his nose was angling toward the food and his stomach grumbled. Loudly. I laughed, and handed him a box. He tore open the packet of recycleware while I nestled up against his hip and side with my own meal.

"Eat up, Bones," I grinned lewdly. "You're going to need your strength."

He glanced up at me with this weird pained expression I didn't know how to interpret — half eager, half doubtful. He did _want_ , didn't he...? I blinked twice at him, then charged ahead, leaning in to offer him a kiss. He didn't pull away, just kissed back gently and then leaned his forehead against mine, and I knew I was right — in this, I knew what he wanted better than he did.

  


#### McCoy

"Go on. Eat," Jim said, eyes bright and quick, looking for all the world like an overgrown kid watching me unwrap his handmade gift.

I'd been planning to check him, make sure he was healing okay, then spend the rest of the night studying, with his company if he was willing, or without him if not. Dinner first was a good idea, even if he was being stupidly over-generous, but it was obvious the meal wasn't all he had in mind.

I stifled a sigh, and wished I knew exactly what we were doing here — or rather, I wished I knew what _he_ thought we were doing. Me, I was stuck. Afraid to move forward, afraid to turn him down. He _needed_ so many things I hadn't figured out yet. And he wanted things I wasn't sure I could or should give him, or whether I could live with myself if I did.

I closed my eyes for the first bite of real flame-seared meat. The steak couldn't compare to Pop's, but the meal was a damn sight better than I'd had since enlistment, and before I knew it I was rolling the last of the collards around on my tongue.

Jim took the box from my hands and set it on the floor, looked at me with those warm, expectant, determined blue eyes, and reached a hand out to my cheek. I had to smile at him, and the way his face lit up, I couldn't help but cup his cheek, fingertips brushing the scar at the outer edge of his left eyebrow.

"Jim..."

My hunger was gone, but not the lingering worry that I was making the wrong choices, following his impulses instead of my doubts — but he didn't wait to hear what I had to say, just kissed me again. His lips were warm, garlicky, gentle but eager, nudging mine this way and that as he brought his hand up to rumple the short hair at the back of my neck. Slowly but surely, he kindled that heat between us again, and I didn't know how to slow him down without bringing back that flicker of uncertainty. If I needed room, space, time to think, dammit, he needed the affection, the touch, the belief that I didn't doubt him, or us, or this, whatever this was.

He pressed his mouth closer, teeth hard against mine beneath sensitive lips, his tongue tasting my lips, teeth, palate. I savored, I struggled, I held my own in a kiss that became an impassioned competition. I shifted, turning toward him, sliding my free hand down over his waist and stroking my thumb over the bit of skin revealed where his jacket had pulled up.

Jim was more direct — went straight for the fastenings on my jacket, pushing it off my shoulders without really breaking the kiss. I struggled to get the sleeves off my wrists, get my hands free again, despite Jim tugging at my black regulation undershirt. I reached out for the clasps on his jacket, but first had to raise my arms so he could get the shirt off.

I brought my hands down to hold his face, pull him back to me, fingers exploring cheekbones and eyebrows, thumbs along the hard ridge of his jaw. I wanted to take my time, learn every inch of him, show him what I thought he deserved. Find those sensitive places that would make him gasp or hiss or whimper. But Jim — of course — had other ideas. I let his weight bear me backward, stroking hands down along the sides of his neck and nipping lightly at that full lower lip.

He wriggled out of his own jacket and shirt, and all of the objections I might have had, up to and including needing to get a last run-though of my notes, could not remotely compete with half-naked Jim crawling over me to take another kiss and press our bodies together. I laid my hands on his sides, looked into those blazing blue eyes, and told myself I could just set my alarm earlier, get the extra hours I needed in the morning.

He panted with eagerness, not shy at all about pushing his erection up against me. I slid a hand around to his back, up the columns of muscle along his spine, his chest warm against me but the pinch of the nipple ring between us reminding me to be careful. He reveled in the skin-to-skin contact, not rutting against me so much as gleefully exploring all the ways our planes and curves could fit together. I turned my head to bite and lick along his jaw. His stubble was coarse against my lips and my tongue, and he gasped when I drew his earlobe lightly between my teeth to suck at it.

He shuddered free, then kissed down my neck, leaving a trail of goose pimples, before taking a nipple in lips and teeth; my breathing went soft and ragged. His hands were everywhere, and I had a brief flutter of wondering if he was trying to show off everything he could do to please me all at once — but he slid down my belly and the simple joyous sensations he was drawing from my skin swept me along. I barely had a chance to take a hoarse breath before his hands pulled at my waistband, pushed at my hips, tugged on the legs of my trousers until he could catch them with one foot and push them all the way off. He flipped something out of his pocket onto the bed, and then his pants followed mine and he crouched between my knees.

I watched, bent-necked and stunned, as his mouth slid down fast and hot over my ready cock. Nerve endings caught fire and thought evaporated; my head fell back on the pillow, my hands curled in the sheets, and I groaned a sound that approximated his name.

Even if it hadn't been such a long time, he knew exactly how to keep my senses on the edge where he wanted them: lips wet and enveloping, tongue probing and pressing, teasing scrape of teeth here and there. I gripped the sheets tightly, grunting and groaning. He shifted his weight back and forth as his lips worked me over; hands and arms brushed and pressed against my sides, my hips, lifted to stroke my torso, my thighs, my balls, but didn't try to restrain me, even as I started losing the battle not to thrust up too violently or too fast into his mouth.

My throat arched back and my eyelids flickered and I didn't want it to end so soon, but his lips slid off and his fist wrapped wetly around the glans and kept jacking me as he fumbled with something in his other hand. He let go for just a second, and then the fist slid down, unrolling a condom onto me, and I gasped at the speed with which he worked.

He rubbed his slick hands together and knee-walked up over my body, dragging his cock and balls over mine. His hands went back and down, one gripping my cock again warm and slippery behind him, the other working deep between his cheeks. I wasn't quite ready for this, I'd never done this with another man, but he positioned and pushed himself down firmly on me, surrounding me with tight constricting heat, and I groaned as my cock took over. He crouched over me, eyes unseeing, open-mouthed and breathing roughly as he worked himself all the way down in three or four fast strokes, pushing the lubrication and the stretch deeper with every hard rock of his hips.

"Jim...." I managed to get my hands disentangled from the sheets, reached to stroke up the center of his torso. I left the nipple ring alone, slid hands across his upper chest, down his arms, ended up gripping his waist. He moaned incoherently, bracing hands on my chest, rolling his hips to meet my thrusts: squeezing, so impossibly tight. We rocked each other in a delirious, sweat-slick balance of straining muscles until his thighs started to quiver.

I pushed up on my elbows, just a little, wanting more skin on skin than I could get flat on my back, and he stretched forward to kiss me. It slowed our rhythm, changed the angle, and that was good, kept me from giving it all up embarrassingly soon. His mouth was hot and musky and I realized I was tasting myself, and that was dizzily confusing. I kept fighting the urge to roll us both over so I could thrust harder, deeper. Some part of my brain knew he'd been pinned under someone too many times; I was afraid of what that change in position would bring out in him. Instead, I wiggled my hand between our bodies, wrapped it around his silky-hard cock and pulled, thumb lightly riding the head.

The noises he made were their own intoxicating reward, and he pushed against my chest to get himself upright, mouth hanging slack, letting me have free access to everything as he leaned his prostate onto my cock and rocked wantonly, stealing my breath with the openness of his unharnessed passion.

He rode me hard and I matched his rhythm, unhinged and enthralled, hand pumping fast until his chin pitched down and his eyes fastened hungrily on me. They glittered, sultry and demanding, with the same blue sheen as the ring on his chest. I shook my head, pleading, not wanting pain to tarnish this moment, this first, this memory-to-be. But he wrapped his hand around mine, forcing my fingers tighter around his dick. Stiffening helplessly, I was captured by the devouring black flare of his pupils, the involuntary gasp-wracked groan as he started to come, the flush that spread from the point where our hands compressed pleasure and pain into one cruel grip — every bit of evidence a doctor's brain might ever want that it _was_ the pain itself that got Jim off.

Assuming a doctor's brain was actually present at the time.

Trapped by the driving, shuddering muscles around my cock — head spinning and heart pounding and everything concentrated down to the place where we were joined — I cried out, loud and wild and uncontrolled, because the orgasm was like _nothing_ I'd ever felt before. Sudden. Overwhelming. It left me shaking, sheened with sweat, hardly able to move.

And goddamn if he wasn't smug about it, sliding his leg over and stretching the radiating heat of his body out alongside mine.

"Jesus Christ, Jim," I finally managed to say, fingers curling around the back of his head.

"You don't have to call me by _all_ my names."

I snorted. "Brat. That better?"

He laughed softly into my neck, and I let my hands wander over his shoulders and back, smooth and almost unmarked now, a month or so after his encounter with a stranger's belt. I held him closer, savoring his salt-sex-garlic-musk tang, and the dreamy, drifting looseness I knew couldn't possibly last.

I wished it could be this easy down the road. It was a nice daydream: sharing a bed and a blanket, getting comfortable with each other's skin, learning each other's bodies. Teaching each other new pronunciations of pleasure, teaching him it was okay to have the pleasure _without_ the punishment. Or maybe we could both learn something new, some kind of innocent and compassionate pain that could fire him up without tearing him down.

But I knew he was never going to be that simple. Not a chance in Hell.

  


σ


	15. Hitting the Brakes

#### Kirk

"Oh, _hellfire_!"

I flinched awake, pulling my arm up across my chest reflexively, but Bones was already out of the bed, a rooster's comb of hair flopping frantically as he yanked his uniform off the floor.

"Time..." I croaked. The light was still pale, early, and I felt cold, disoriented.

_0637_ , the computer said. I sighed and sat up, scrubbing a hand through my hair and watching Bones disappear into the bathroom. So much for checking in to my dorm.

"You're not late," I called through the door. Except this was Bones, who was fucking early for fucking everything, and had probably been planning to make up for the study time he'd lost fucking, last night. I couldn't help smiling, a little, still feeling his hands on my waist.

His mutters didn't really carry over the hum of the sonics. "....goddamn....", I heard, and "...alarm...." I pulled my slightly stale uniform on slowly, and checked the agenda on his padd. He had two more finals today, and the big practical tomorrow morning, starting the same time as my last test. Listening to his half-panicked grumbling at himself, I knew I couldn't distract him again tonight, before his toughest final, no matter how much I felt like time was running out for us before the break started.

I sat on the edge of the bed, waiting, fidgeting with my own padd; I still didn't know what the hell I was going to do with myself on a nearly deserted campus, during the most fucked-up time of the year.

Bones came out dressed, depilated and combed, every inch the uber-appropriate tight-assed cadet, and I summoned up a smile. "Stop fretting. You'll do fine."

He shook his head, eyes dark, but walked the two steps from the bathroom door to the bed, leaned down and kissed me. I gripped his hand.

"It's going to be a busy day," he said, "but we'll catch up with each other as soon as we can, okay?"

"Tomorrow," I said firmly, squeezing his fingers, letting him know he'd have tonight to study. He paused, frowning crookedly, then grimaced when his padd pinged a reminder alarm. He nodded apologetically, pulled his hand out of mine and hurried out the door.

My meals and tests went by in a blur, and I spent some time distracting myself in the evening, figuring out how to do a more elegant job of hacking the log to fix my various indiscretions for the quarter. Ernie kept his back to me, hunched sullenly over his own desk.

I tossed and turned half the night, unable to find a comfortable curl around my pillow, unable to shake the feeling that I'd been pushing my luck, that all I'd done was give Bones time and space to come to his senses.

Before dawn, I slipped out to exercise and get breakfast in the thick foggy gloom. Friday's early morning final was my last, and lack of sleep had me second-guessing every answer, but I didn't think I'd fucked it up when I finally got it turned in. The sky was still coated with gray overcast as I emerged.

I went straight back to my dorm, only to find half the room stripped and spotless. No Ernie, no plants, just a bare mattress and empty shelves. Froze. Turned my back on the half-empty cubicle. Rode the lift down, chewing the inside of my lip until I tasted blood, then worrying at the sore.

Sudden trepidation — like the fucking sky was about to land on my head — stopped me cold in the middle of the nearly empty quad. Didn't have anything to do with Ernie, I didn't even _like_ the little shit. But he was gone, and I didn't know whether he'd washed out or just ditched me. And I'd fucking overachieved on my fucking exams again, and now they were done and that left a whole lot of nothing between me and Christmas, and Bones...

I pressed a hand against my ribcage, took a deep breath. The greedy itch was coiling in my gut again, an ache that had only grown more powerful while I was looking the other way, trying to pretend I was all right. I still wanted, I needed, I deserved...fucking hell, I didn't even know anymore. But I didn't have to give in — Bones was leaving but he wasn't gone yet, and he'd said we'd find a new way, some kind of surrogate sin.

I fumbled out my comm. I couldn't interrupt his exam, of course, but I stood there on the grass, tapping out a silent "call me" message that he'd see at lunchtime when he was done. Then my restless feet started moving of their own accord. Gym was all tied up with hand-to-hand exams. Beach was cold and fog bound. Couldn't go back to my dorm. Couldn't go out to the city, knew myself too well to think I'd make it back — couldn't ask Bones to dive into the dark looking for me.

An impetuous idea took hold and grew swiftly, pushing my feet toward the sim lab. I checked out a shuttle and buckled in tight. With a fierce grin, I pushed the metaphorical accelerator to the floor, needing only the loud music and the wind in my hair to complete the charged black rush toward the virtual planet ahead. No backing off; I put the shuttle into a straight-on nose dive and rode out the free fall with my abandoned heart in my throat, tried to keep my eyes open as I smashed face-first into the unreal, unfeeling ground.

Then I did it again.

Four times in a row, crashing headlong into four different planets. Guessing whether this was really what plunging toward nothingness would be like — except, of course, for the lie at the end when the dampeners kicked in and tapered the impact to something that wouldn't even leave harness bruises. Feeling the gees screaming silently through me, each crash leaving me shaking in the aftermath, banging my head repeatedly back against the cushioned rest while I waited for the sim to reset again.

_Quiet your mind for a while._

It wasn't real, but it was almost enough.

_Give us time to figure somethin' else out._

I put the pseudo-shuttle into a fifth stomach-churning dive, letting it plummet freely, but about halfway down I took the controls in hand and tried to pull out of the death spiral. Didn't make it. Not that time. But I kept trying until I did.

"Very impressive, Mister Kirk, and I applaud your determination. However, I think you've had enough simulator time for one day."

Oh, _fuck_.

Pike's voice, clear as crystal over the shuttle's comm. Goddamn stupid son of a bitch. Of course, they would have noticed what I was doing, how could I have thought I'd have any privacy in here? And of course they would notify _him_. The sense of dread I'd been feeling all day congealed into a cold, clammy sweat on my skin. I had to take several long breaths before I was ready to unbuckle the harness and climb out to face him.

But it was an old skill, locking feelings down, arranging my face in a neutral mask, imitating all the things that made people look relaxed and _normal_. I made my pulse slow up, felt the ability to smile and nod and lie returning.

He waited calmly at the end of the corridor that held the sim capsules, tall, powerful, arrogant as hell, gray hair curling into sideburns sharp as a blade.

"Captain Pike." I offered a formal salute.

"Walk with me," he said, mildly, leading the way into one of the pilot debriefing rooms. Harsh lights illuminated a semi-circle of chairs in front of an instructor's desk, and the walls were lined with artists' images of heroic starships, including the new _Enterprise_.

"Have a seat," he said, ignoring the desk and pulling out a chair for himself.

I maintained the casual, curious expression, doing everything in my power to hide the hollow vacuum that howled deep inside me, the panic that I was about to lose my chance here — lose Bones, lose _everything_ I had left. Careful and slow, I sat down, brushing aside the juvenile offender instinct to slouch rebelliously in the chair, show him that I didn't care what he could do to me.

I did care.

I had to get a grip, had to maintain the life-or-death illusion that nothing was wrong. A glance up at the ship they'd been building in my backyard in Riverside for the last five years made it easier to cut off the foreboding, summon up the familiar veil of numbness in its place.

"What's going on, Jim? What were you doing in the simulator?"

I'd had a little time to think on that.

"Practicing, sir." I made my lips curl upward, a little bit. Put a cocky twinkle in my eye. "I was told that pulling a shuttle out of a ninety degree dive was impossible and I didn't believe it, sir."

The captain leaned forward, elbows on knees. "So the tech who called me, concerned about one of my cadets who was crashing a shuttle sim repeatedly without touching the controls, was... misreading the situation?"

"Had to practice falling first, sir."

"I see," he said. He watched me with soft, steady patience, trying to read my eyes. "You wouldn't be the first person to take out their frustrations on a sim."

I gave him nothing to read. "I'm sure that's true, sir."

He let the silence stretch out for quite a while before deciding I wasn't going to answer the question he wasn't asking. But I was beginning to think he wasn't planning to kick me out right here and now.

He sighed. "I want to help, Jim. I know you never thought you'd end up here, and you've got a lot of adjusting to do, a lot of options you never expected to have. You can't let yourself get too bogged down in the day-to-day stress, or one quarter's tests — there's a bigger picture to think about."

His smile was warm and meaningless.

"You're right, sir, I'll do my best to remember that." Put on a rueful smile in return, so grateful for a mentor's good advice.

"Look, Jim — Lieutenant Chapel showed me the courses you've set for the next term. I was hoping to see you in FL 110."

It came out of nowhere, and I blinked slowly at him, bluff called. The numbness shuddered off the rails. "FL? That's Command track." Principles of Leadership? What the _hell_  ? "Sir."

"Yes, it is. And you need to get started."

"I'm not...Captain, I'm not command material." The dizzy sky-is-falling sensation returned, redoubled. _Something better. Sick fuck. Twelve minutes. Disease and danger._

He tilted his head at me quizzically, same way he had just before I'd passed out in the Riverside bar.

"Several of your instructors would be surprised to hear you say so. As am I."

I shook my head, queasy disbelief squirming beneath the empty mask. He didn't know me at all.

"I'm...sir, I'm glad to be here," I said, the necessary words spilling out, "and grateful for the opportunity to earn a commission." _But I'm not my father!_ "But I'm just a scrapper, sir. I think security or somewhere else in ops would be the best place for my talents."

"You'd be wasted in security, even as head of security. Command gold doesn't have to mean the captain's chair — you'd make a good tac officer, too, though based on your performance in the sim this afternoon you might do even better at the helm." He stood, eyes pinned on me. "I'm not going to dare you this time, Kirk. I'm telling you. Enroll in FL 110." The smile was faint and probably ironic, but it was there. He leaned forward, offering me a hand to shake. "I think you'll surprise yourself."

I returned the handshake in a daze, and we stood. He dismissed me without giving me a chance to reply.

I walked down the steps of the sim building feeling like my ribcage was shrinking around my chest, squeezing the breath out of me.

Command? It just wasn't possible. If I managed to graduate at all, I had hoped for a nice safe little position somewhere in the bowels of a ship, put my stupid fucking genius to work somewhere helpful, where I couldn't get in too much trouble. Bones might be the only one who would understand, but no one else had to — and fuck, fuck, fuck, Bones might not even be around by the time I got a gold shirt. If I got a gold shirt. If I even _wanted_ one.

_Destined to soar..._

Noise roared in my ears, twisted needs thundered through my body. I started moving, and within a few strides I was flat-out running, slamming my feet down on the empty campus walkways.

  


#### McCoy

I hated practicals on the first go-round, and doing them under the watchful eye of Starfleet Medical wasn't any better. The problem, for a change, wasn't self-doubt; I knew I could handle the doctoring. Being followed around though, watched, _judged_ on every action you took or failed to take, being aware of the instructor's slight frown every time they tapped their padd — it was a distraction that always set my head aching, my brain telling me every little error they might be noting down, even some I knew I _hadn't_ actually made. So I was wrung out, in a way that I never would be after the same hours at an exam table, or even an operating table. It had only gotten worse when I'd had to rush through eating lunch, standing outside the overcrowded hospital cafeteria, before diving back into the second half of the day.

Didn't help that after just two nights of having Jim with me, sleeping alone had felt like the divorce all over again. And I wasn't even sure what to expect now that the day was done; "tomorrow," he'd said — but who knew whether he planned another night together, or going out on the town to celebrate, or was already packing for Iowa? Or wherever he was going for break.

Still, I half expected to see him waiting for me outside the hospital, playing on the steps or doing handstands on the grass or something. But the walkways were empty under a sky falling quickly into dusk — looked like two thirds of the school's population had already taken off, and there was no one in the dorm lobby either. Walking down the hall to my room, I sighed and unzipped my jacket.

When my door slid open the room was musty, wrong-smelling and dim, striped twilight barely peeking through the blinds. I only got a glimpse of moving shadow before Jim lurched into me, pressing home a sloppy, demanding kiss, his mouth thick and foul with whiskey.

"What the _hell_  ?" I took a sharp step back, tension seizing hard in my lower back.

"Bones..." His voice was rough and dangerous, and he crowded closer, backing me up against the wall. The peaty smell of the alcohol on Jim's breath curdled my stomach; Jim drinking alone in the dark made old rage boil under my skin.

I pushed his bare arms away to get myself some space, some cleaner air; my hands came away tacky and his bared teeth gleamed in the dark. "Li—"

He seized my arms and slammed his mouth up against mine, silencing me and keeping me from regaining my balance. Adrenaline alarms shrieked through me at the violence, and the desperation in the press of his body, and the faint tang of blood beneath the booze, and the stickiness on my palms. I pulled away, cracked my head against the wall but managed to snap out "Lights!" before Jim could stop me again.

Vivid, violent red blood: long open cuts spreading across his upper arms and chest, fresh blood trickling down everywhere and smeared on his biceps where I'd grabbed him. Cold panic shattered through me — _ohchristjimno_ — the harsh lights revealing spatters of red and red-brown on my bed, on his uniform pants, on his bare feet; the glitter of broken glass on my desk. His face was contorted, sweating, eyes staring wild and tortured into mine before he released my arms, took hold of my wrist instead, pressed my hand up against his bloody chest.

Heart pounding, I spread my fingers, tried not to press on the congealing scab beneath them.

"What is this?" My voice was a low snarl, angry and frightened. Underneath my alarm, the doctor in my head was still measuring blood loss — not life-threatening: the cuts were long but shallow, and he hadn't gone near the major veins or arteries. Not after death then, but _other_ dark things.

He pulled my hand harder. " _Hurt me_."

I tugged my wrist away, only half-aware I was shaking my head. " _Jim_." My mouth had gone dry. "I can't. Not like this. You don't need—"

"You said you'd help, you said we'd find a way, you s-said we could do this," he panted, his pupils dilated wide. Where, where had this come from?

"This isn't the way..."

"I stayed, I waited, I tried, I can't..."

Waited...for me? Tried? God help me, was this Jim trying to _fight_ his demons?

"Were you _wrong_   ? Is this too much for you?"

His tone was heavy with provocation, and I went rigid against the wall behind me, frightened — not _of_ Jim, rather of the readiness for violence crackling all around him — but he was still too close and my fight-or-flight reflexes weren't making the finer distinctions. I tried to side-step around him but he was ready for me, slid an arm out to block me.

"You said you wanted me — did you lie?"

"I sure as hell don't want you _right this second_ , Jim, but I wasn't lying," I said, breathing hard, setting my hands flat against the wall to keep myself from reaching for him or pushing him out of my space. I was afraid for him, flailing hopelessly out of my depth, had no idea what the right response would be — I just knew I couldn't give him the slightest hint I might start lashing back at him the way he wanted.

I wanted to figure out what he _needed_ , but damned if I could think clear enough with those blue eyes burning just centimeters away, the emergency-scents of liquor and blood still pervading the air.

"You want the boy cadet, the boy who behaves," he slurred, "the boy who might fit in the fucking gold shirt, the one who's not fucking _real_   !"

"No, you asshole, I want the _man_ who's trying to cope with all the real _shit_ that boy was put through!"

He recoiled, white-hot fury flaring in his eyes for just a moment before he smothered it, before he backed away from me, teeth bared, trembling with helpless hyperarousal.

A fragment of glass crunched under his foot, and he glanced back at the mess on the desktop — the Scotch bottle, shattered glass and sodden ribbon in a puddle of reeking liquor. With sudden purpose, he swept a large chunk of glass off the desk — a makeshift blade that was already red with his blood.

"Jim, no!" I reached toward him but he retreated against my wardrobe and the shard arced, slashing without a hesitation across the middle of his other forearm. My heart stuttered when he lifted the hand towards me so the fresh blood flowed toward his elbow.

" _That's_ real...!"

"That's just makin' your outside match your insides. But it's _all_ real." I dragged my gaze back up to his face, away from the blood, breath aching in my chest and throat. "You don't got to bleed to _hurt_ , Jim."

This wasn't about suicide, this was about all that pain locked inside. He needed an excuse to let it show, needed to hurt, wanted _me_ to hurt him despite all the tenderness I'd shown him. Or _because_ of it — affection, affliction, emotion, all tied up in knots. Even drunk and cut up he was still dry-eyed and white-knuckled, still wild and lost and searching for a release. I wondered how much fuel he could possibly have left — but then I realized he sustained this tension _all the time_ , more or less, with that boundless energy I'd been misreading all along. He was _always_ wound up and ready to fight, or run, or bleed. He'd built these mechanisms to survive the pain and abuse he must have endured, but now he was as trapped by them as any cage.

I wished I thought he'd hear me if I tried to tell him I understood.

We stood there in a horrible silence broken only by Jim's ragged breathing. I couldn't save Jim — wasn't a God damned white knight riding in on his charger — but maybe I could give him a choice he didn't realize he had.

A choice he probably hadn't had before.

"Jim," I said, holding my hand out flat for the shard of glass, holding his gaze, trying to keep my voice firm and level. "Give that to me, and we will _find some other way_."

He wavered, blinked; his fingers tightened, the edges of his blade slicing superficially into his fingertips.

"Dammit Jim, _trust me_."

His eyes were nearly blank with the ferocity of the struggle behind them, but at last he stretched out his shaking hand, and placed the shard carefully on my palm.

I tossed it toward the recycler, behind the two of us, without taking my eyes off of his — saw the despairing retreat, the beginnings of that otherworldly, crystalline sheen I'd seen in his eyes the morning I discovered he knew how to heal himself. When he'd thought that his secret and everything that he'd built upon it was lost.

I took another step closer, reached out and caught his shoulders, shook him gently.

"I'm here, Jim."

His eyes refocused on me slowly, and I saw a flicker of fear, there and gone again like heat lightning. Blood welled and oozed and cracked against his skin in a patchwork of trickles old and new, begging for my attention, but the shallow wounds weren't half as important as the emotions he was straining to keep locked down. I shifted my grip so I had one arm around his rigid back, pulling him against me, catching his forearms up between our chests. Tough as I knew he was, I handled him like he was spun glass.

How did the cycle go for him, how did he reach that momentary peace I'd seen after the piercing, after he'd broken his hand? What was I missing, what was he waiting for? Pain, and more pain, but I _couldn't_ hurt him any further. Whatever I'd thought I might be able to handle, playing with his bent perceptions using sympathy and safe words, it wasn't this — not this soul-shredding desperation, not this re-enactment of traumas past.

I rubbed my hand across his unwounded back, moved us a few steps along the side of the bed, and eased us down, side by side. He shook against me. I realized his lips were moving, and leaned closer, trying not to breathe in the stale alcohol still clinging to him.

"...don't run, don't leave, don't run...." he whispered endlessly.

I pulled him tight against me.

"Jim. _Jim_. I am _not leaving_. Listen to me, dammit, I was never going to Georgia and you are not going to Iowa. Do you hear me? I'm staying with you, we're staying together, and we're going to find a way to—"

"Fix it..." he gasped. "Please, Bones, we have to fix it."

"We will..." I started to say, when the truth smacked me hard between the eyes. _That_ was what was missing. Fixing the damage. Not just a practical necessity for Jim, not just the sober cleanup after his wild version of cutting loose. My vision was going white; I pressed my cheek against his.

He provoked and he pushed the limits until he got what he thought he deserved, he made the pain his own somehow, and he reached that endorphin-fueled calm. And then — Jesus Christ — then it wasn't over until he'd _fixed_ the damage. _Hidden_ the damage, so no one would ever know.

"Jim..."

Healing his body would never fix anything, because healing was part of the abuse.

And _damn_ if I hadn't managed to put myself square in the middle of his cycle, all unknowing.

_But if you need fixing up, after, you don't do it yourself. You come find me._

_It's gonna hurt. I promise._

_I'll just make sure it won't scar, then._

But whose role had I been stepping into when I told him I'd fix it? Who'd taught him that _real_ pain was only what left marks on the skin, only the stuff you could see, sold him the lie that mending the body made it all go away?

  


σ


	16. Skidding toward the Edge

#### Kirk

Couldn't move. Wanted to stand, to leave, to run, but I was frozen, wrapped in his arms like a grasshopper in a spiderweb. Facing an empty chasm of fear: deeper than a quarry, wider than a cornfield, blacker than space. Pain, so much pain, real pain, dangerous pain, written on my skin and he would _run fly die_ trying to escape it.

_Don't run, don't go, don't leave me here..._

Bones pulled a hand free, laid it on my face. I looked up, wide-eyed and shaky; he was pale with anger.

"Jim, listen to me. I am _not_ leaving. I am staying with you. You are not alone."

Eyes blazing, warm hand cupping my cheek. Real.

 _Staying. Not running from this, from me._ I gasped in a breath and trembled, twisted cut fingers in the front of his jacket.

"That's it, Jim. I'm staying, I've got you, I'll..." His voice died away, overcome with emotion. His arm settled back around me, fingers curled in my hair, cheek resting on the crown of my head. "Jim....who did this to you?"

Black awfulness tightened my chest, couldn't breathe. _Rotten kid, never tell, you'll scare 'em, you'll make 'em cry..._

"Who hurt you so badly that they needed to cover it up after?"

 _You brought this on yourself!_ Squeezed my eyes shut, dizzy and wrong, sky falling all around me.

"I did," I whispered. True and not true, real and not real.

"No."

Little noises in my throat. Bones never bought the twinkle or the lies, not once. Even before he knew how fucked up I was, before he'd seen the imperfect repairs beneath the shiny surface. My arms were pinned between us all sticky and cold, heartbeats drum drum drumming, his and mine, against the ugly cuts on my skin.

"You know that wasn't what I was askin'," he spat, tight and angry at something outside the circle of his arms. "I don't care how brilliant you are, the damn regenerator's too complicated to teach yourself."

 _Stop, no..._ My voice was tiny next to his. "Just f-fix it, Bones, just help me fix it."

"Mendin' your skin isn't goin' to make this go away..."

"It will." _It will, it will, it always does._ Little shudders, growing stronger.

He shook his head, emphatically. "No, it _won't_. Just because there's no scars on your body don't mean you weren't hurt. You could mend these up right and perfect, an' you still would've hurt y'self, an' you'll carry that memory because _it happened_."

 _"No!"_ Heart rabbit-thumping in my chest, so hard it hurt, muscles strained and shaking, pushing against arms that wouldn't budge. Gulping for breath, too fast, too fast, blackness closing in, couldn't talk, couldn't see, couldn't keep struggling.

"Jim!" His grip tightened, gentle and slow, couldn't hold him off, couldn't fight anymore...his arms bound me closer, sure and secure. "Easy, darlin', easy."

_Darlin'._

Didn't need to fight, this was _Bones._

The scaffolding of panic cracked, buckled, vanished; without it my struggles collapsed and my stuttering heartbeat slowed. Breath came out rattly and wrong, like the sky really had crashed down on me, like I was a cheap imitation Atlas with a broken ribcage. He cradled me close, holding me together.

The vigilant adrenaline was all gone, used up, and the pain closed in, became a prickling net of agony over skin raspy and chilled. Black exhaustion welled up around me, muscles felt heavy all over. Would sink right down through the mattress to the floor if he wasn't holding me, deserved to sink right down into the ground.

"That's it, Jim, let it go, let it go." One hand held my head, one stroked firmly over my back, soothing, his voice a low murmur in my ear.

"You're okay now. You're goin' to be all right," he said, and I couldn't identify the rough emotion in his tone.

"You got a whole host of issues — you're hyperaware all the time. You feel like you can't stop watchin' for danger, 'cause you never know what might set someone off an' you have to be ready. You don't think you deserve anythin' good; you're always feelin' the itch to punish yourself when things go right. Someone taught you those things — but, darlin', they're _not true_. Life, ordinary life, even Starfleet life, is not that hard. You're not alone now, you can ask for help. You don't need all those survival mechanisms anymore, you don't need to believe that you can't share the pain."

He sighed roughly, and his hands stilled. I opened my eyes, listening to the shake in his voice.

"And before you ask me how I _know_ , Jim, my pop was a drunk. Never raised a hand to me, because my gran wouldn't have stood for it, but out of her sight he was meaner'n a snake anyway, when he'd been at the bottle."

Tilted my head back so I could see his eyes: red-rimmed, brows taut and unhappy. Tried to imagine him young, tried to imagine him facing down _mean_ and felt a weak whisper of anger. Needed to say something, just couldn't find the energy to seek out words and bring 'em back, and he kept going besides.

"He managed to function just fine in public, of course, so's no one else could see. So I _know_. I know what it's like to think you can't tell 'cause no one will believe you. I've felt like I was flayed right down to the bone without a mark showin' on my skin, an' maybe Pop did it to me with words where you were actually beat, but I swear to God I understand."

Didn't _want_ him to understand. But maybe he did. Felt wide-eyed and naked under that deep sympathetic gaze. I searched his eyes, searching for a way out, a way back to comfortable secrets and lies — hide-and-seek with my past, in the maze of my memories, was another game I played to lose — but he wasn't going to let me forget this time.

He watched me, _knowing_ , his emotions raw on the surface; no place to hide, no lie to shield me.

"You were right about dirt, blood, an' whiskey, Jim. An' I figure you learned to use the regenerator out of self-preservation. I wouldn't want a drunk comin' at _me_ with one. So who was it?"

_Empty house._

"Doesn't matter." Voice creaked like a reluctant boxcar, forced along the tracks.

"No? How d'you figure? Because it was real. It happened. Cleaned up don't mean _gone_."

"Real's what you decide it is. Gone and over and done a long time ago."

"Mind over matter don't always work. An' if you're right, why's it still hurtin' you so bad right now? What happened today?"

"Nothing. Ernie left."

_Bare mattress, empty shelves._

"And then what?" he asked, gently, like Ernie meant anything. "You couldn't reach me, thought I'd gone, too?"

I could only nod, throat tight.

_Empty shelves, empty house._

"Well, I'm here now, and I'm not leaving. Never was. What else happened?"

"Tried," I said, cold and limp and empty. "To find another way. Tried — messing around in the sim. Tried — to come to you. Tried to drink, just drink..."

His lips tightened; didn't need another drunk in his life, I thought bitterly. But I hadn't known what else to do.

"The sim?"

He wouldn't like that any better than the drinking. "Flying. Diving. Adrenaline. You know."

"No, I don't. Tell me."

I shook my head, but he stroked his fingers over my cheek.

I sighed. "I crashed it. On purpose. Into the ground. Because it wasn't real, Bones, no blood, no damage — I was trying..."

"Promise me you wouldn't have crashed anything if it _had_ been real." His voice shook.

"I never give up, remember?" The words tasted of acrid dust. "I don't do things the _easy_ way."

He waited silently, hand slowly tracing patterns on my back.

"What do you want, Bones? I don't know what the hell I'm doing here but I'm not — this isn't — I wasn't trying to _end_ anything. If I could I would have done it a long time ago, I had a _shitty_ childhood and it would have been a hell of a lot easier if I'd given up somewhere along the way but I didn't and I'm here now and..." Clouds of unchecked words, slipping out from between my fingers, floating over the deep, dark pit of exhaustion. "I can't do this."

"Okay. All right, Jim." A soft kiss on my temple, and he shifted us so my head rested more comfortably. "We'll talk about it tomorrow."

I was sure he would finally let go, finally get the kit and put things back the way they were supposed to be, but he just tugged the blanket and quilt up over us both, heedless of the smears of blood I had left and would be leaving on them. His arms folded me in, his warmth filled up the space beneath the blanket, and his breath whispered across my ear.

"I'm glad you didn't give up."

  


#### McCoy

I ordered the lights down low, then lay still for a while, watching Jim give in to exhaustion. Wanted to get out of my reds, but didn't quite dare move; figured even with the hard adrenaline crash and the liquor in his veins he'd be awake again in a heartbeat if I so much as twitched. Lord knew he needed the rest, even though it was still early in the evening. Hell, we both did. Only my brain was too busy chasing its own manic tail for me to get anywhere near drowsing off.

Jocelyn would have a field day with me pushing someone _else_ to open up. But then, I could see now she'd been right all along — I never had fully let her in, had been shoving her away hard as I was holding her to me. Couldn't blame her for finally giving up. And Jim and I'd been playing push-me-pull-you, too, doing the same damn thing, trying to make sure that when — if — things went all to hell we were ready. As if somehow holding a person at arm's length instead of up close and warm made it _any_ easier when they weren't there anymore.

Well, I'd felt what losing Jim might be like, for one terrible heart-stopping moment. And I knew I didn't want to face the life ahead of me without him — I couldn't let the universe take him from me, and I couldn't keep holding back expecting us to fall apart. I watched the sharp line between his brows soften slowly, and sighed. Too damn alike, the two of us, too used to holding people off to protect ourselves, too used to hiding what was in our hearts. And Jim with the fear drummed right into his bones that his world would come crashing down if he so much as whispered he _had_ a secret, let alone told it.

Got the feeling "shitty childhood" was maybe the closest he'd ever come to putting words on his pain, or speaking it to another soul, since he was the lost child stuck in the middle of it all.

Never would have occurred to me how easily abuse could be covered up in the hands of someone who knew how to use a medkit. How must that seem to a kid like Jim? One minute you're battered, the very next there's nothing to show, no way to prove to anyone what's been done to you. Must have seemed like some kind of perverse magic. But if I could see the signs in his behavior, surely someone else must have...

My lips tightened. Small town, isolated farm, and whoever'd had care of him knowing enough to prevent visits to the ER...and once they'd convinced brilliant, stubborn Jim the secret must be kept, he'd do most of their work for them. I looked at his face on my pillow and tried to see the guarded, quick-thinking little boy he must have been — learning to smile and lie wouldn't have been hard for him. Throw in some people in awe of who his daddy had been, and yeah. I knew only too well how easy it could be to keep a secret when no one wants to see the truth.

And Jim, well he'd _learned_ the lesson, locked everything up tight behind that easy-going smile until his body had to do the talking, until he had to do some desperate thing to write the pain on his skin and allow himself to _feel_ — get someone else to beat him to a pulp, or drink himself stupid and shed his own blood with a shard of glass.

Jim shifted in my arms, and I took a couple of slow, deep breaths, focused on relaxing before my tension woke him. Even knowing he hadn't been trying to take himself out of the world, was hard to remind myself that he could have been back in the Tenderloin, drunk and reckless and belligerent, chasing the dangerous release that could land him in someone else's ER — or worse — whether he meant it to or not.

 _I never give up_.

It was chilling comfort that drink and the shallow glass-shard cuts on his body were _safer_ ways to let himself go, particularly given he'd figured on making it all _go away_ when he was through — he sure as hell hadn't meant for me to see him wrecked like this, raw and dangerously exposed. No wonder he was afraid I was going to bolt.

Breaking a kid's body is a sin against all that's good and right. Breaking his ability to trust, his belief that anyone can or will help him — that's a hundred times worse.

The doctor in my head, the shade of my Pop, my own good sense, all screamed at me to get up, get the kit, _do_ something, _call_ someone. My medical training was useless here, and I had a feeling even a psych specialist like Lieutenant Chapel might be floundering where Jim was concerned.

Jim's breathing slowed, his body settling more heavily against the mattress as a deeper stage of sleep claimed him at last. I didn't trust anyone else to take care of him right, but I still didn't have the faintest damn clue what to do myself, how to get him to tell me what was going on behind the bright, brittle smile, beyond "fucked up in the head." I couldn't even heal his skin, not right now — the kit and the process were part of something huge and ugly in his past, and much as I wanted to fix everything for him I knew better; couldn't let him try to be shut of it all.

The last time I'd felt so horribly lost was the night I'd spent hours exiled to a maternity ward waiting room, pacing and waiting to hear if Joce was going to pull through. Her placenta had abrupted without warning and she'd lost our daughter before either of us had guessed what the cramps might mean. By the time we arrived at the hospital, she had been hemorrhaging so badly she'd been near unconscious, skin frighteningly clammy and pale.

 _God damn it, Len, how did you_ not know _?_

I cautiously shrugged out of my jacket, keeping one arm around Jim at all times. He shifted and murmured uneasily but didn't wake; when I'd settled again he curled closer against my chest, fists catching at my undershirt. I studied his face in the silvery half-light, dark guilt slithering in my gut.

_Useless boy! You should have seen this coming, if anyone should!_

I closed my eyes, set my jaw. Didn't matter now if I'd let myself get too wrapped up in the warmth and touch I'd craved and failed to watch out for Jim's complicated needs. Whatever Jim had been planning for break we'd churned up too much evil for me to leave him alone with the darkness. I didn't know what might be waiting for him in Iowa, whether the monster who'd taught him this horseshit was still there, but either he wasn't going or I was going with him.

Which meant — I swallowed. Which meant I wasn't going to be available for St. Frank's. Guilt assaulted me from a different direction, tightening my throat and my belly, Pop making another ruckus about responsibility and duty in the back of my head.

But, _damn it all_. I'd suspected way back in the ER that the beating and rape were the result, not the cause, of Jim's inner suffering. This time I was sure the cutting and the panic were only symptoms of his terror of being left behind — Jim didn't even _like_ Ernie, and somehow his leaving had set this grim avalanche in motion.

I cringed at the thought of the hospital scheduler's reaction, at the disappointment of the doctors who'd maybe already told spouse or child that _this year_ they'd be home for Christmas — but I couldn't leave Jim.

Too much time tending to strangers instead of taking care of my own?

Not this time. I owed Jocelyn an apology, and Pop could go to hell.

  


σ


	17. Leaping Free

#### Kirk

I'd been starting to get used to waking more slowly in Bones' arms than I did on my own, but the needles of pain across my skin brought me around all at once, fear and memory coalescing just behind. I lay still and alert, eyes closed and breathing even, using all my other senses to guess at the time, and our position on the bed, and whether or not he was awake.

Bones was still, too, and I decided he wasn't sleeping; I could feel his light breath on my face, one arm still around my back. Finally he shifted slowly, until he could slide his other arm out from under me. He hesitated, half-off the bed, and I let my head sink heavily onto the pillow, tongue trapped against the bitter rankness in my mouth. I needed him to believe I was sleeping, desperately needed time to think. Everything had come undone yesterday. I had to find a way to stitch it back together, slide by it somehow.

I listened intently; he moved around the foot of the bed, and I relaxed a little when he went into the head instead of out to the corridor. Even though it was stupid and contradictory to want to keep him here and run away from him at the same time. I squeezed my eyes closed.

Too much. Too fucking much.

The toilet flushed. The toothbrush hummed.

I heard fingers tapping on a padd, thought guiltily of the dozen half-crazed messages I'd sent him during the waning afternoon. I'd gotten it in my head that his practical would be done at midday, fled the clamor in my head only to find one more empty room, with one more ghost in it — the goddamn bottle of Scotch that Pike had given me at the beginning of the semester.

What the hell was I going to say to him?

_Gee, sorry I lost my shit. Can we just forget I ever broke into your room, drank up the fucking booze that I gave you as a gift, drunk-messaged your comm repeatedly, and bled all over the quilt your gran made for you? Can we?_

Yeah, that would go over well.

Too agitated to pretend anymore, I pulled my sticky eyes open, distressed to find I had to gather my energy before I could pull myself upright. The sheet fell away, pain sending fitful sparks through my sick and twisted nerves, but the sight of the crusted scabs and flaking brown smears of blood on my skin — all too plain in the white morning sunlight — set my pulse pounding again. Not fixed, not gone—

_Clean this mess up! Now!_

A small movement jerked my gaze upward, and I flinched away from the tall figure in the bathroom doorway, couldn't stop the reaction even though I knew it was Bones. Dizziness cascaded over me, taking the blood from my face with it.

"Lie back down before you pass out, Jim," Bones said, worried. "When's the last time you ate?"

 _Ate?_ I leaned back on the headboard. With everything else swirling in my brain it felt like a nonsense question at first, had to fumble back in my memory for a faint answer. "Breakfast?"

"Yesterday?" He grimaced, walked across the small room to the bedside table. He pulled out a meal-replacement bar and held it out to me. "Eat."

I did as I was told, nibbling slowly until hung over finally lost out to hungry. Bones moved around the room while I took bigger bites of the tasteless stuff. I watched him pick up his trash can and a towel from his hamper to sweep the shattered bottle off his desk. A terrible wrongness vibrated inside me, a pressing need to stand and clean it all up myself instead of just watching, but I couldn't bring myself to speak up and risk more of his questions.

The last bite went down hard, and when I looked up again he was standing still, inspecting Pike's medallion dangling from a golden-brown ribbon.

 _Your father would be proud_.

I slid out of the bed and made straight for the bathroom, slamming a palm onto the lock and turning the water on high. My head pounded; I leaned on the counter until I was sure the not-food wasn't coming back up, then cupped cold water against my face, into my mouth. I avoided looking at my grisly reflection in the mirror, knelt to get his kit from under the sink before I remembered that I'd left it on the desk outside.

_But if you need fixing up, after, you don't do it yourself. You come find me._

Except Bones hadn't fixed it up last night, hadn't offered to fix it this morning. He didn't want it to go away.

I stood slowly, turning until I could lean back against the counter, stomach churning. I was trapped, between the mirror and the door, between facing my injuries or facing his questions.

"Jim?"

I stared at the floor, teeth clenched.

"I've got some clothes here that should fit you."

His voice was calm, matter-of-fact. I couldn't answer, but I did force myself through the door before I could wind myself in tighter knots.

The room looked orderly again, mattress made up with clean bedding, quilt folded neatly at the foot with some clothes stacked on top. The blood and broken glass and ribbon were all gone, only the faint ozone scent of sonics lingering where the reek of Scotch had been. Weird _déjà vu_ shivered through me and I pulled my fingers into a loose fist just to feel the pull of the scabs on my forearm. My eyes flicked to the kit he had lifted up to the shelf over the desk.

"Why don't you go ahead and get dressed?" Bones sat on the edge of the chair, elbows resting on his knees, watching me closely. He was wearing his jeans and an ancient Ole Miss tee shirt, hair falling loose over his forehead. His gaze hadn't followed mine. I was right. He wasn't going to fix this.

I licked my lips, lifted the clothes, looked into those patient hazel eyes.

"I need — I need to get out of here, Bones."

"I thought maybe you would," he said, slowly.

"I mean—" I drew a shaky breath, not really knowing what I meant, what I needed. I didn't want the talk he'd promised, I didn't want to answer any more questions but I couldn't be alone with the crazy fucking mess in my head. "Will you come with me?"

"Didn't think I was going to let you go off all on your lonesome, did you?"

I swallowed. Hesitated. Reached for his padd, looking to him for permission. His lips pursed a little, but he nodded, and when I looked down I saw the last message he'd sent, telling St. Francis that an emergency had come up, that he wasn't available to cover shifts over the holidays after all. I blinked twice, shocked, and glanced up at him again; Bones never backed off from work, ever.

He shrugged tightly, frown lines showing. He didn't _want_ to back off from work. But he had.

He really hadn't been planning to go home, either. He'd expected to be alone here in San Francisco just like I had. I shook my head, pressing my lips together. Stupid, lonely, fucked up. Both of us.

I sat on the end of the bed with the clothes on my lap. Cleared the message screen and searched for the service I needed, tapped away on the padd to arrange what I wanted. _Want, need, deserve._ Cracked my knuckles tensely, trying not to think any harder, not just yet, needing to get out and _move_ first but _sick fuck_ and the rest of it kept circling.

Nodded my thanks to him, went back in the head, found some aspirin, brushed hair and teeth. Peeled off uniform pants marred by dark stains. Took a deep breath, started cleaning dried blood off the skin in between the still-tender scabs, then pulled his Academy sweatshirt down over my head, covering up the mess I'd made. The borrowed black slacks fit me well enough, a little snug around the waist. Put my boots on, retrieved my comm.

Looked myself in the eye in the mirror, felt almost normal for half a second before all the bleak impossibilities came crashing back in.

When I came out he nodded that he was ready to go, didn't ask when I took his brown jacket out of his closet and handed it to him — and shit, why was he doing this, following me without even asking where we were going? If there was anything I didn't deserve it was him, putting up with all this fucking crazy bullshit.

_Broken. Wrong._

I led him down the lift, out of the building, down the pathway to the old parking lot; glad for the silence, knowing it wouldn't last forever. But there _weren't_ any words I could put on the feelings that boiled, always, just under the surface of things with me, feelings that drove me to do things no one in their right mind would ever do.

He didn't try to talk, didn't push. He did, however, stop in his tracks when he saw the big motorbike the rental guy was wheeling down off the hovertruck. Yeah. Of course. Because Bones actually _was_ in his right mind. My heart sank down into my toes.

I needed him.

"Bones.... _please_."

He drew a short, apprehensive breath, questions churning in his eyes, but then — it was the weirdest thing — he cut off the imminent panic, went calm, looked me straight in the eye.

"I don't suppose you rented any _safety_ gear to go with that thing?" He sighed, then did a double-take because the rental guy returned from the cab of the truck with two helmets and a padd for me to sign. Bones gave me one of his sideways half-smiles, then took one and looked into it kind of dubiously. I helped him get it settled comfortably before putting on my own and swinging a leg over the bike.

"God help me," he said, settling awkwardly behind me, arms automatically wrapping around my waist, down low where he wouldn't hurt me.

I felt better as soon as the engine started, and I took a few slow laps around the parking lot, demonstrating how to lean into the turns. Then I took us out onto the highway, headed north onto the Golden Gate. Ground traffic was light, mostly slow-going tourists, so I went easy, but as soon as we hit the other side I opened it up and sped past Starfleet Headquarters and Sausalito, up into the Marin hills. He tightened his arms around my waist, tucking his hands into opposite cuffs to protect them from the cold cutting wind. I had only the vaguest idea where we were going — away, just away.

I slowed a bit as we climbed our way through light fog clinging to the hills, then descended back into sudden sunshine as the road turned up along the coast. A wilderness reserve of some kind spread out ahead of us, only a thin ribbon of road threading through bare hills and trees and rocky cliffs. The clouds of confusion lifted; I put all my concentration into taking the curves smoothly, compensating for his inexpert weight, heart and bike racing equally fast as I put more and more distance behind us.

 _Ask for help._ As if it was just that easy, as if there was some magic hypospray or psych bullshit that would make me normal.

I pushed the bike faster.

 _You are not alone._ Always, always fucking alone, the rest of the world far away, beyond the empty fields and empty roads, beyond reach even when they're right in front of you, beyond that intangible barrier that keeps them from seeing what you really are.

My eyes blurred and I blinked furiously, can't afford this now, can't afford this ever — what the fuck was happening to my goddamn self-control? I saw a fork in the road and veered uphill to the right, away from the winding coast road, hoping for something long and straight inland, taking deep breaths and trying to keep my focus on driving.

 _I swear to God I understand._ Did he? _Could_ he, even a little? Was that why he stayed when everyone else ran? His helmet rested sideways across my shoulder blade; he wasn't watching where we were going, just trusting me to take us there — he probably had his eyes closed. Why? Why did he stay? He seemed to get bits of it, pieces of it, but I could never tell what he was thinking, what he wanted. Was it because he had that barrier too; things to hide, things too big to feel? _You're not alone_.

The climbing road threaded its way around a reservoir, over a bridge crossing deep blue water, and out between hills again — and then I choked back a laugh because I got what I'd wished for, a long straight highway...arrowing right through cow pastures and fallow fields of overturned earth. I had to take some deep breaths to steady myself; the farm valley was broad and flat, with oak-clad hills obscuring a proper horizon, but the differences weren't enough to shake the feeling that I was fifteen again, speeding under a cloudy Iowa sky on a bike I'd built with my own hands. Not escaping...there was no running away, just moving, moving, always moving. I nudged the gears higher, pushing for more speed on the long straightaway, but even back then speed had never been enough. _Isn't goin' to make this go away._

Many kilometers later, we approached the end of the valley, hills closing in on either side. Bones squeezed my thigh and pointed at the chunky gray outline of a building ahead. I gradually downshifted until we came to a crossroads with a decrepit old-fashioned fuel station. The pumps were long gone, but the little store was painted with colorful signs assuring us they were open.

Bones climbed off the bike slowly and squatted down till his knees popped. I stripped the helmet off, feeling oddly naked without it, and rubbed and wrung my hands together to get some feeling back into them. Then I followed him into the dim space and hung near the counter as he hunted among the racks for something reasonably breakfasty. A brightly printed sheet on the back wall caught my eye: a photo of a wooden box with a gigantic window across the front, perched on a hill, over a big "Vacation Home For Rent" headline.

I cleared my throat and gestured toward the photo, asked the lady behind the counter, "Is that nearby?"

She glanced at it, and back at me, then pulled the flimsy down off the wall so I could get a better look at the price and the comm code. "Pretty close. East from here, 'bout twenty minutes up along the crest. Nice view over the lake."

It sounded brilliant — someplace new, private, away from the narrow dorm rooms where too much had happened between us. Not that I thought he was going to let us slide into easy chit-chat and day hikes and stargazing on our "vacation", but still, having a destination in mind at least gave me some illusion that the conversation could be controlled.

  


#### McCoy

I'd heard Jim talking to the gal behind the counter but hadn't really been listening while I filtered through the junk food and vehicle maintenance supplies, looking for something at least a little bit nutritious to keep the two of us going after nearly two hours on the road. When I got back up to the counter with a couple of pieces of fruit, Jim had pulled a splashy "For Rent" flimsy down from the wall and was looking speculatively at me.

"No reason to go back right away, right?" he asked.

"I don't reckon so," I answered, seeing the appeal of somewhere other than the Academy grounds, but trying to figure how much the rental was going to run. "But, Jim—"

He was already digging in his pockets for his comm, pressed it to the register to pay for the food, then headed out the door with the ad in hand; I assumed to make rental arrangements. I shared a long-suffering look and a sigh with the fair-haired woman behind the counter.

Jim was typing the address into the bike's guide when I came out, and caught the anemic apple I tossed to him.

"Go ahead and grab a bite," he said, "I know you're probably starving. But there'll be more when we get to the house — groceries are included with the rental. They should be delivering pretty soon after we get there."

He gave me a defiant tilt of his chin, obviously not about to let me say anything about the expense.

I searched his face. The long motorcycle ride or the open landscape seemed to have settled him; he no longer looked quite as pale and hollow-eyed as he had this morning, nor as off-balance and vulnerable. He took a big bite of the apple, staring off into the distance rather than trying to make conversation. I leaned against the store, near a trash barrel where I could drop the orange peels, until we'd both finished and he'd tossed his apple core in after them.

He licked his fingers clean then saddled up, and I put my helmet on again and settled behind him, reminding myself to wrap my arms low around his body. The road wound tightly up and then along the crest of the ridge, steep golden-brown slopes dropping away right off the edge of the road. I tried not to hold my breath; kept my eyes open this time, careful not to disrupt his concentration and to help him maintain our balance. It felt like forever before we pulled to a stop behind the very plain-looking wooden cube propped out over a sharply falling slope.

Jim waved his comm at the door, and we heard the hiss of it unsealing. The place was pretty much all view from the inside — one big floor-to-ceiling window and a huge deck, fronting on one big room with a well-made bed at one end and an eating/lounging space at the other, corners partitioned off for a tiny kitchenette and bath. I walked over to the pale maple table, stripped off my jacket and hung it off the back of one of the chairs. Jim went straight for the window, rested his forearm on it and stared out into the cloudy sky, ignoring the deck and the lake down below. My throat tightened with the unlikely vision of the window shattering beneath his weight.

"Tell me that's not glass."

He glanced over at me, then shook his head and looked outward again.

"Doesn't feel like it. Transparent aluminum, maybe."

I rummaged around in the kitchenette, which turned out to be stocked with dishes, silverware, a basic first-aid kit and a few non-perishables; then walked over to lean on the arm of the couch.

"So where are we, anyway?"

"Less than an hour back to San Francisco, down Highway 101. Wouldn't know it, would you? That's Lake Laguna, and the city of Petaluma's about ten kilometers that way," he said, gesturing assuredly out the window toward the opposite shore without looking back at me. "Grocery store there'll deliver staples and fresh stuff any time now, and we can order anything else we'll need online."

That defiant tilt of the chin, again, but there wasn't any point in my arguing; we'd bailed out of the dorm room with nothing but our comms and the clothes on our backs, both of us expecting we'd be going back when Jim was too tired to run anymore.

He watched me out of the corner of his eye, probably figuring if I wasn't going to argue I was waiting to to pounce with uncomfortable questions.

"C'mere."

He sighed, and reluctantly turned toward me, scratching at the prickly stubble on his chin — I'd depilated this morning, out of habit, but he hadn't. He looked almost rough enough to put me in mind of that first shuttle ride, and I wondered again what had motivated him to join Starfleet.

But now wasn't the time to ask. Not quite yet; he wasn't as brittle as he'd been last night, but I didn't know for sure he wasn't still standing right on that edge.

And hell, maybe I needed reassurance and a little more time to think, too.

I tugged him close, and he melted eagerly against me, automatically seeking a kiss. I gave him a gentle one, then nuzzled against his cheek. His arms slid around my waist, and he gave me that little devilish smile, the blue in his eyes brightening with that uncanny ability to shake off unhappiness as if it had never existed.

"This how we're gonna spend our vacation?"

I shrugged, returning the smile. "How'm I supposed to know? You're driving. Downtime's not exactly my strong suit."

I hadn't taken a proper vacation since I left home, not really; both Joce and I had been in school when we'd married so we'd taken only a weekend for our honeymoon before diving right back in to our studies. I stroked his cheek; I had no idea what to do with myself if I wasn't working, and no idea what Jim and I would do with all the many days ahead of us without classes and work shifts and assignments to interrupt our usual erratic conversations.

"Oh, I'm sure we'll think of something..." he smirked, hands cupping my ass, seizing the chance to let physical distraction chase away whatever was going on in his head. After all, there was just the one bed, and long as neither of us bolted was a sure thing that sooner or later we'd be doing more than sleeping in it.

"You think?" I said, with the edge of exasperation he would expect. His kisses were getting more insistent, and I did need to do _something_ I knew would ground him, build up some sense of safety before we got into the hard discussions. Otherwise, we were likely to end up right back on that motorcycle. Or, worse, I'd end up stranded here watching Jim tear off.

I hadn't fully made up my mind, but I did try to slow him down a bit; it was probably just as well that the door chimed, announcing the groceries arriving. I let him answer it, scrubbed a hand over my face, heard him spinning some glib story about our last-minute rental for the delivery guy while they brought crates in from the truck together.

I sighed, wishing this didn't feel like walking a damn tightrope. Watching his muscles work as he lifted and carried, watching him charm honest laughter out of the guy he was already calling Antonio, I half-wished it were possible for his way to work: for his physicality and determination to be enough to carry him out of the shadows. I couldn't blame him for wanting to act as if — or even believe, on some level — none of it had ever happened. But that was exactly what his abuser had demanded — that Jim erase, pretend, forget. When he sought out new abuses, he was defiantly making his hidden pain _real_ again.

Real. Unreal. The tension between them was the lock that held him, and the key.... A lunatic thought struck me, and my breath caught.

When medicine was a young art, there was a prohibition about cutting the skin to treat anything; the physician was not supposed to cause the patient additional pain. But we'd gradually come to realize that sometimes you have to cause pain in the short term to mend or cure.

_You have a surgeon's hands, Leonard McCoy, and a compassionate heart._

Out of nowhere, the vivid memory of Emony Dax bubbled to the surface — the assurance in her voice, the softness of her dappled skin under the hot Mississippi sun, the pounding of my pulse when her words illuminated the path I really wanted to follow. And the terrifying cost: voluntarily putting myself back in Pop's line of fire.

My heart was pounding all over again.

_Sometimes only a doctor can give a body what he really needs, boy._

Jim paused halfway to the kitchen with a final armload of groceries. "You okay?"

I shook my head, tried a half-hearted smile. "Fine. Just thinking."

Part of me was convinced the idea was no better than the medieval practice of bleeding to balance the humors. But surgery was performed when someone had something that needed to come _out_. And maybe ... maybe what I was thinking _would_ work for Jim. Open that lock. Get him to a place where he could face getting help, and know that he'd be believed. At the very least, color his perceptions of _real_.

Or maybe I was just fooling myself.

"We've got everything in now. Are you gonna help, or what?"

I shook my head clear, pushed off of the couch.

"I'm helping," I answered, walking over to start unloading.

_I hope._

  


σ


	18. Crashing to Earth

#### Kirk

Bones and I worked together, finding places in the tiny kitchenette for all the staples and pre-packaged food; most everything we could want. He set what looked like a random assortment of things aside on the counter while we were sorting, then started making lunch, and I don't know why it surprised me that he could cook. He looked very much at home inspecting the vegetables over the sink and hunting up a cutting board while I continued to put away boxes of crackers and snacks.

Then I cleaned the veggies for him; he told me about his gran teaching him her favorite recipes while he focused intently on chopping up chicken and vegetables and mixing up some kind of floury dough. I learned a little more about the shape of his family: Gran and Pop, tons of cousins, a mom who died when he was little. He seemed a bit distracted, didn't ask any more about my family, yet, and it was a huge relief to fall back into our normal give and take.

Once we got to the point where I was getting in the way, I pulled the household padd down off the wall and asked Bones for his clothes sizes. He glared at me, in his charming way, and I told him he could hardly stop me from buying things for him so he might as well let me get clothes that fit.

Clothing taken care of, I asked him if we needed anything else for the kitchen — I was happy with what they'd delivered but he started reciting a list, and I finally handed the padd over. He paused to ask if we needed to order certain "supplies", and I grinned and retrieved a key hanging high up inside the pantry door, and explained about the secret stash of condoms and such that Antonio had told me about — for visitors' use, but hidden away from innocent eyes. Bones did his best little non-sexy lip twist to discourage me, but he also tucked the key into the pocket of his jeans. I grinned.

When the food was all prepared, he set the lid on the pot and I grumbled cheerfully about how long it would take to be ready compared to the heat-and-eat stuff. That earned me yet another withering look, a raised eyebrow and a sardonic comment about some things being worth waiting for.

And he wasn't wrong; by the time the chicken and dumplings were nearly ready the whole place smelled wonderful. We carried the plates outside to the table on the deck; the small lake and the enfolding hillsides looked stark and subdued under the heavy gray sky, but the air was only mildly chilly.

Once he was satisfied with my table-setting, we finally got to eat our lunch, and the homemade flavor was... _umfff._ A fuckload better than pre-packaged nuke-and-pukes, a shitload better than the school mess, and a hell of a lot better even than the restaurant food I'd pretty much lived on before the Academy, since getting access to my inheritance. I made damn sure to tell him so in amongst the teasing, which actually made him blush. He didn't even snark at me for surreptitiously scooting the celery off to the side of my plate.

Between the two of us we finished off the whole pot he'd made, mopping up the sauce with chunks of fresh sourdough bread. I made a point of pressing up against him in the tiny kitchenette as we cooperated to get everything inside and the perishables put away, and my dastardly plan worked: he left the dirty dishes in the sink and let himself be herded toward the chunky Mission-style bed by my insistent kisses and caresses.

Three quarters hard already, I reached for the fly of his jeans. He caught my wrist gently, brought my hand up to his mouth and tongued just the tip of my middle finger, hazel eyes watching mine steadily. I made a noise that undoubtedly started as sexy somewhere down near my toes, but sounded sort of strangled and strained by the time it squeezed out of my throat. I pushed closer, hooking my free hand in the nearest belt loop and holding him still so I could thrust my chin forward, meet him halfway for another hungry kiss.

Bones kissed back warmly, light presses of the lips full of lazy promise, shifting our feet a bit at a time until I was the one backed up against the bed. He drew back with a little smile before our tongues could get engaged.

"I'm gonna take my time with you, darlin'. Go slow an' easy and find all those places that'll make you come alive under my hands. The ones you know, an' the ones you don't know."

His voice rumbled right through me, low and perfect. He took a half step back, stopped me from following him by tugging up the waistband of my borrowed sweatshirt. I went still when he pulled it upwards gently, blanking the feeling that he still might recoil from the blood and pain underneath, but he took the shirt up and off over my torso, my raised arms, my head, then stepped closer again.

He smiled again — when was it that I had found myself wondering if he ever really smiled, or laughed? — and let his fingertips brush over my arm and chest, right over and along the ugly scabs. Not ignoring them but just... accepting them. It was a dizzy, right-but-wrong feeling that set me trembling again, layered over the ripples of pain and pleasure that followed his fingertips across the marked and unmarked skin.

"I'm not afraid, Jim. Not going to bolt."

I closed my eyes and slid forward, abruptly needing full contact. Chest softly impacted chest, the adornments of my craziness pressed heedlessly against his smooth skin as I wrapped arms tight and hard around his waist.

He kissed my temple, leaned his head down and nipped just where my pulse fluttered under the corner of my jaw, his hands stroking soft along my sides. He bit down just a moment, sucked _hard_ after my heartbeat, then came back along my jaw.

I moaned, sliding greedy hands up his back, under his shirt, and he eased me down on the bed, kissing all the while. I kept my eyes closed.

"Easy, Jim. I'm not going anywhere, and we've got all the time in the world."

"I." Nudged upward against his groin. Breathless. "Need."

"I know you do. But I want you to slow down. We're gonna get everything we need, I promise." He set his palm flat on my chest, braced his other hand next to my side and leaned in, tongued the hollow of my throat. "Shhhh...we're gonna do this my way this time, all right? Ain't no one waiting for us, no deadlines to rush off an' meet, nowhere else we've got to be. An' I'm not goin' anywhere."

 _Staying._ My head moved blind and restless on the pillow, neck twisting under his exploring tongue, and my fingers continued to curl against his back. Bones pushed up, kissing again, stroked his hands carefully over my stomach and slid his fingertips beneath the waistband of the pants, teasing along the crease of my hip.

"S'matter, Jim? Afraid to look at me?"

My eyes blinked open, focused on Bones, calm and solid and strong in the dim afternoon light.

"It's all right, darlin'. Let me be good to you." He reached up and stroked his palm along my cheek, the other hand undoing the button of my fly. I nuzzled into the touch, lifted my hips so he could use both hands to slide pants and underwear down. He had to pause to get my boots off before he could strip me fully naked, and took a moment to get himself undressed too.

"Mmmmm...." I reached for him, as eager to get my hands on his body as he was to have them there. He bent down, stroked his nose against mine, and my mouth lifted to his.

It wasn't easy, slowing down, when all I wanted to do was devour him, drive him to the far edges of passion, press our bodies so close it would feel like we could never come apart.

But in this as almost everything else, he meant what he said. He asked me to lie there and take it for an hour or more while he explored my whole body with his fingers, and his lips and tongue — all of me, from my hairy toes to the ticklish spots behind my knees to the pulse points in my wrists. I stretched and arched under his touch, though every now and then I was racked by a nervous, inexplicable urge to curl up and hide from his tender scrutiny.

When he stayed close enough, I explored him in return, learned not to zero in too quickly on the erogenous zones, to keep it slow so he didn't pull away. As our bodies heated up, we rolled and shifted and mussed the bedding until he finally kicked the comforter over the footboard, just as the room was flooded by warm gray light — the bright smudge of the sun, still veiled in layers of clouds, had fallen far enough to shine in through our window.

I loved learning all the weird hidden contours of his body, still strange to me in places, and sweet and salty and smooth and hairy — and he had his ticklish spots, too. At the same time, Bones examined the depth of my belly button, the responsiveness of each nipple, the curve of my collarbone.

He left the not-quite-fresh cuts out of the play, didn't press or poke to try to invoke my pain thing but he wasn't overly cautious about holding me close or laying against my chest either. He kept coming back to my mouth, couldn't seem to get enough kisses, and to my neck, licking and nuzzling and sucking until just his breath was enough to send jolts through the delicate skin.

I was helplessly aroused and frustrated. Every bit of skin and nerve sang with energy, like I'd sometimes felt in the hormone-driven high of a good fight or a hard fuck, but it didn't just surge and fade. The light kept getting brighter, yellow and then orange softly gilding the bed and our bodies and everything around us, and the erotic thrill kept winding tighter without going anywhere, until I thought he was going to take me apart at the seams.

And then he pivoted and slid down my body upside down, leaving me on my side breathing hard and hot on the beautiful cock he hadn't yet let me touch. I didn't need any more invitation than that, I wrapped my tongue in a loose swipe around the head of it just as he licked a swipe down the underside of mine, and holy motherfucking god, I wasn't going to last two minutes.

Except that his mouth retreated immediately, and he pulled his cock away from my searching lips with a little groan, and I made a pitiful sound to show him how close I was to dying. He set a calming hand on my hip, kissed at the top of my thigh, and waited. After drawing a shuddering breath, I finally mirrored him, and then he _slowly_ — oh my god, so fucking slowly — worked his lips in a winding path from my hipbone to the base of my dick, and then in a lazy climb from base to tip. And I had to go just as slow mouthing his; every time I tried to increase the pace he backed off again.

By the time I finally had him deep in my mouth again I was floating and feverish with need, muffled whimpers caressing his cock as I struggled to please him without running ahead, mimicking his every move. The sun blazed, reaching out to us for a few brilliant moments from the gap between the clouds and the hills, and his warm mouth was the center of my universe, holding and driving me until I was just a mindless conduit, taking in stimulus and giving it back again in an endless dreamy spiral, without thought getting in the way at all.

Have I mentioned before that Bones is the only person who's ever blown my mind?

  


#### McCoy

Took both of us long minutes to unwrap ourselves, wipe surreptitious hands over aching jaws, crawl up to find the top edge of the sheet and the scattered pillows, but finally we settled together. To my mild surprise, Jim curled around me, big-spoon style, cheek pressed against the side of my neck, hand spread flat over my beating heart.

Whatever else was to come, I had to count this as a perfect moment. The pale watercolor hues in the cloud cover, all that remained of the vivid sunset, were framed by the dark room. The air was just cool enough that the heat of Jim's body around me was a blessing, not a prompt for a regretful breaking of contact. And though I'd never deciphered whether the pillow against his chest acted as a shield or a comfort or both, I was glad to be playing the role this time.

We drowsed there until night had fully fallen, when Jim finally stirred, lifting his arm and shifting away from me. I rolled to face him, gave him a gentle kiss.

"Okay?" I asked.

He snorted. "You have to ask?"

"Brat." I got out of the bed, ducked into the bathroom and sluiced off quickly; came back out to Jim sitting on the edge of the bed, his head lowered. Worried, a little, until he looked up at me and gave me a wiggle of the eyebrows I was sure he meant to be lascivious but which mostly just looked comical.

I wrinkled my nose at him, tucking the towel more firmly around my waist. "Go on."

He left the door open while he showered; I took a moment to straighten out the bed a bit, considering.

The rough scabs on his body weren't easy to look at, or touch. And that had nothing to do with being a doctor: those marks were blemishes of suffering on a body I cherished. Still, I was slowly learning how to accept the paradox of Jim without flinching. I'd let my fingertips brush over his arms and chest; watched him tremble in reaction to yesterday's emotions, or whatever mixture of pain or pleasure he was feeling, or the simple reality of my accepting touch. The powerful urge to _fix it_ was still there — I'd be worried if it wasn't — but I knew intimately that all of the shallow wounds were closing properly, his body doing what it was supposed to do. I was humbled by the reminder: advanced technology isn't magic, just a tool to accelerate the body's ability to mend itself.

I asked the computer to opaque the window, then fumbled around until I found the switches for the old wall lamps over the head of the bed, and spilled a soft puddle of light over the bedding. I took a deep breath, looked back at the bathroom — he was humming to himself, off-key, in the shower stall — then retrieved the key from the pocket of my jeans, and found the discreet keyhole in the polished wooden platform beneath the mattress.

The hidden drawer slid out silently, a long tray in the front filled with condoms and lubes and gels of all sorts. Behind that was a startling array of sex toys, still sealed in their packages, and trust Jim to stumble us into a place so well-stocked. My first thought was that I'd have to hold onto the key if I intended to keep teaching Jim the joys of slow and vanilla; my second brought a blush to my cheeks. But play wasn't what I was here for.

I reached out to lift a simple pair of leather wrist cuffs and their matching tethers, turning my half-baked plan over in my head and the box over in my fingers. I tugged the cardboard open, glancing up at the sturdy brushed-metal bars conveniently mounted in the wooden frame of the headboard, wishing I had a better idea of what we were going to need.

I unwrapped a second larger pair, then tucked the boxes away and set the cuffs on the bottom shelf of the nightstand. I located the spare linens, and set a couple of clean towels near the bed, then headed to the kitchen. The first-aid kit was very basic — bandages, disinfectant, a snakebite kit, aspirin and smelling salts, gauze and tape, but no regenerator, not even a small hand-held scanner, and no scalpel. I sighed, reluctantly searching the knife rack. Proper surgical tools wouldn't make what I was thinking of doing any less nuts; the smallest, sharpest paring knife would serve well enough as a surrogate. _If_ we took things that far. The shower shut off, and I dropped the knife in the kit and hurried back to the bedside, stowing the whole mess out of sight.

Then I stripped off my towel and curled back up under the sheets, head propped up on my arm, waiting. Opened my arms to him when he came out.

Jim looked relaxed, almost happy as he snuggled naked into my embrace.

"My way's not so awful, is it?"

He laughed. "No, I can't say I have any complaints."

I got him settled on the pillow, stroked my fingers through his hair, settling the damp spikes into softer waves.

"Not, you know, that any of the ways we've come together have been bad. Infinite diversity, infinite combinations, isn't that what the Vulcans say?"

He looked up at me, smile faltering, and I could almost see him thinking back on the things we'd done his way. Not where I wanted this to go; there was some important ground I needed to cover before we ventured back into dangerous territory. But it was worth putting a few of the things I'd been thinking about into words first.

"Don't go feeling guilty about your twists, Jim." I touched his chin, kept his attention. "Listen to me. There's two things tangled up here that I think we need to get clear. One is that you have this thing where pain lights up your pleasure centers. I don't care if that's born, learned, or what. It's a part of you. If you ask for it, you can have pain, and pleasure, _and_ trust, just like we had with the piercing. But you've got to give up thinking you deserve punishment because you want pain."

I kept looking into his eyes, willing him to understand this part.

"Because that's the other thing — there's times you think you're getting what you _deserve_ when someone's hurting you. An' I am not willing to lay hands on you that way. You're not going to push me to _punish_ you. Do you get the difference?"

He blinked and looked away, then back at me, the cloudy blue of his eyes worried and doubtful.

"There isn't a clear border, and we're probably never goin' to untangle it completely, Jim. And it's not something that you and I can work out here and now, or on our own; if you really want to change things, then some later day we're gonna have to find someone who's got the right training to help you — to help _us_." I kept going, before he could get hung up on that, either. "But none of that matters just now. What _matters_ is that we're together, and we want each other, and we speak totally different languages where sex is concerned.

"You're used to the rough end of things, fast and passionate and more or less dangerous, with or without pain or bondage or some other kink mixed in. I don't know much about that, but I believe it can be good stuff, with someone you trust, and I'm, uh, kinda eager to learn more."

I could feel myself blushing, cursed myself for stumbling over the words I wanted him to hear. Jim was watching me intently, the rich light illuminating the unsettled expression he normally wouldn't let anyone see.

"But there's this _whole_ other type of lovemaking at the other end of the spectrum, sweet and tender, slow building and powerful. And that's the language I want to teach _you_."

"I... yeah. A good language." Jim cleared his throat — paradoxical all over again, that he was nervous about admitting that he _wanted_ tenderness. A little quirk of a smile. "Takes a talented tongue."

"Innuendo later," I said, firmly, returning his small smile. "Thing is, if we're going to explore new territory, if we're going to find a way to make both languages work for us, I _need_ us to use safe words." I set a finger on his lips. "I'm well aware you think you can take anything that comes your way, but Jim, darlin', _I_ can't do 'anything'. I just can't. Sooner or later we're going to reach my limits and I need to be able to trust that if I call a halt, you're not going to push me to keep going."

"I wouldn't, Bones—"

"I've seen you when you're all het up, growling for ' _more_ ,' begging me to _hurt_ you. I want to set this up ahead of time so's I have a surefire way to tell you I can't go any farther."

"You don't need a safe word for that, I promise." He shifted restlessly among the soft sheets.

"I believe you, Jim." I stroked a light hand over the side of his neck. "I'm not asking out of a lack of faith. The safe word _is_ the promise, that's all."

He nodded slowly, thinking hard.

"Now for the other half, and I know you're going to argue up and down that you don't need a word, and won't use it. An' I expect that'll be true most of the time, because you are one tough stubborn soul, bless your heart.

"But there's _so_ much I don't know about you and your past. No matter how much I learn, I am always going to be afraid I'm going to stumble into some physical or emotional land mine that's been laying dormant for so long you don't even remember it's there. I am not going to be able to stop being afraid, and cautious, and _annoying_ , unless I can trust that you have a way to tell me you're in trouble."

  


σ


	19. Scrabbling in the Dirt

#### Kirk

I hesitated — I'd always hated the idea of safe words, safety nets, I'd always chased real pain and real danger, and knowing there was a way out made it fake, useless. But what he was talking about was different. I wouldn't be out in the wild chasing the itch; no matter what I did with Bones, even if he _could_ bring himself to push me really hard, it wouldn't be "real" in that crazy twisted way. It'd be something else, something I only had with him.

And I knew he was right about second-guessing himself, being afraid to hurt me or afraid of going too far. That was part of why I'd never thought he'd be able to accept this part of me in the first place. So maybe it did make sense, if a safe word would let him relax and enjoy the way he had in the aftermath of the piercing.

I ran a finger slowly around the edges of the blue ring on my chest, watched the spark of a smile in his eyes as he followed my train of thought.

"Yeah, Jim, something like that." He shifted closer, propping his cheek on his hand. "Okay, so, what word do we want to use, then?"

"Fuck. Put a guy on the spot..."

"Won't work. You say 'fuck' about once every third breath," Bones said, deadpan.

"Prick? Bastard? Motherfucker?" I gazed at him innocently.

He startled himself with a quiet laugh that shook his shoulders and the bed, and interfered with whatever sarcastic comment he wanted to make — I grinned, delighted to have earned that elusive laugh at last.

He shook his head at me. "I was thinking something more along the lines of 'time out.'"

"I'm good with that," I said with a shrug.

His thumb stroked along my cheek, and the last of the laughter in his eyes gave way to something I _still_ couldn't read. I knew playtime was over; the questions were back in town.

He saw me recognize it; his gaze went softer and harder at the same time, and his hand pressed against my face.

"I know you'd rather just put the past behind you, let those questions you didn't answer yesterday stay that way. Talkin' about what hurts isn't something that comes natural to me either — the less my pop knew about what was goin' on in my head, the better. But I kind of like the shape of what we're working on together, and I don't want to fuck it up the way I did with Joce. And God help us both, but that means talking, and listening, and maybe giving up some things we'd both rather keep hid."

"I don't want to fuck it up either," I said gruffly, laying still and looking away from his eyes like that'd convince him to go hunt something else.

"But you don't see how talking is going to help."

"No." The whole idea of him knowing everything was setting off useless alarms; lips pulling taut, muscles pulling tight. I struggled to find that numb mask that would let me look more relaxed, but it was a lot more difficult with Bones than it had been with Pike.

"It might not." A startled frown pulled my brows together hard. "It's not magic, Jim. You've been keeping secrets all your life, and maybe I think the fact that you don't ever put your pain in words gives those secrets more power than they deserve, but revealing 'em isn't going to make the pain go away."

"Then why?"

"You remember that first morning together in your dorm room? I figured out a part of your secret, and I didn't run away — you let me in, and we got something I don't think either of us ever expected to have. And the tattoo parlor — you let me see another secret part of you, and it got us a lot more."

I rolled away from him, onto my side. In the dark reflection in the window, I saw him lift his hand just before I felt it settle on my hip.

"Let me in, so you don't have to be afraid your secrets are going to drive me away. So I can be at your side. _On_ your side."

_Inside the veil with me._

He shifted his grip to my elbow. "You and me against the universe, remember?"

"The universe _sucks_."

"Get no argument from me."

Old instincts were telling me to keep my mouth shut, keep my distance, _run_ , even. Only his touch was gentle, and the bed was warm, and the house was snug, and I wanted to stay.

"Help me understand, Jim."

"You already _know!_ " He'd figured out the rough outlines of what had happened in that farmhouse with hardly any help from me.

"No, I don't," he said, low and gruff. "All I've got are hints and clues that've led me to make educated guesses. But I _don't_ know. I don't know what you're so afraid of, _right now_."

I stared into space, jaw grinding, avoiding looking at his reflection. It took me a long time to speak, my voice rough and close and quiet.

"You don't get it, do you? All that shit is _over_. _Done_. I don't talk about it, I don't think about it, most of the time I don't even _remember_ any of it. If you'd been there then maybe you'd have done something but it doesn't _matter_ now."

"If it were over and done, you wouldn't still be hurting."

"I'm still hurting because that's what I _chose_ , after I put the kid stuff behind me."

"You locked the kid stuff in a box. It's not behind you; you're carryin' that heavy weight, every God-damned day. And choosing pain — you push so hard for it, Jim, I think you're still trying to prove you can survive it."

"I _survived_ it by _forgetting_ it. I _reinvented_ it by enjoying it. And I may be fucked up and fooling everyone at the Academy, but I want to stay, I want to try to get it right, and if I don't reinvent the pain again, the fucking itch is going to screw my career, and screw you and me. So why don't you leave the past alone and _help_ me?"

"Because you're still playing by the _rules_ of the past." His hand slid over my ribcage, fingertips settling on one of the scabs from yesterday. "The past is _right here_."

"Bones, there's nothing I _want_ to remember. I need to leave it...buried." I turned my face down farther against the pillow, trying to get a grip on my breathing. "I don't like being left and I got freaked out yesterday and I'm sorry. I need to find a better way to deal with that. And Pike put some heavy shit on my shoulders and I need to deal with that too. The ugly past just doesn't _matter_ anymore — you don't know how hard I'm working at not being who I was then. I'm trying so hard to be _good_."

"What's _good_ , Jim? Walking through the day like you've got nothing to hide, then going out at night to get a beating, then erasing it all and starting again?" He shook his head, ever so slightly.

"I haven't been doing that!" He should know that, better than anyone. I felt the bite of nails on palms, realized my hands had curled into fists without my input, and god damn it, I had to get myself under control before he pushed me too far.

"Not recently, no. But you'd rather go back to that than talk to me. Why? What happens if you do?"

Took two, three deep breaths through my nose. "I wouldn't know. I never told."

It was only sort of a lie. Only one soul ever found out, and I didn't _tell_ him a thing — but that was part of the black hole in my mind, the place I didn't go.

"You're afraid, right now, of somethin' happening. What is it, Jim? Afraid I'm going to leave, too? Or is it somethin' else?" His fingers slid off my hip, clasped over the white knuckles of my fist.

I kept my muscles locked, so the urge to throw him off turned into nothing more than a twitch of the forearm. But my jaws were clenched hard too, didn't think I could give him an answer even if I had one.

"Afraid if you let just a little bit of this anger slip away from you, you'll burn down the world?"

"Don't," I said through gritted teeth.

"Don't what? Don't ask? Don't keep putting the pieces together? I may not know the whole story, Jim, but I'm betting you've got all kinds of right to _be_ mad."

"I don't _wanna_ get mad."

"You're already there." He hesitated, his thumb stroking over my wrist. "I trust you, you know."

I snorted out a bitter laugh.

"If you were going to hurt me, you would've."

"I don't want to hurt _anyone!_ "

"Except yourself, right? You're not the one who does the hurting, you're the one who _gets_ hurt, is that it?"

_Something weird. Something special. Leave him alone. Let him run._

"You'd rather have it the other way around?"

"No. I want you to step _off_ the merry-go-round."

I tried to exhale my anger, harsh and loud, was startled by how shaky it sounded. "You think I haven't tried? He's long gone, toothless, helpless, and I still keep coming back to the same old dance."

"I know you try to lock it all away, but I'm betting that in your head he's anything _but_ helpless. And you not ever saying anything to anybody, living by his rules, just makes him that much badder and meaner, and makes the anger that much worse because he's _still_ tormenting you even though you're a man grown."

A hollow, rotten chill went through me, tightening my chest, and I squeezed my eyes closed, trying to fight back the all-too-familiar sensation. I'd felt it in that first filthy alleyway with that first trucker, was what I always felt just before launching myself into a fight, was the end of the itch. Desperation, I'd always called it. And sick relief. Bitter release. Want, need, deserve. Not rage. Never rage.

And it was almost like Bones sensed it, because instead of just lying against my back with his hand draped over mine, he pulled me up tight against him. He slid his hand to my wrist, pulling that fist up tight against my chest so I couldn't lash out, and lifted his knee to rest on my calf, ready to pin me down if I tried to move.

  


#### McCoy

Jim lay curled on his side, panting shallowly, lips pulled back baring his teeth. I wrapped myself hard around him, watching him struggle in the reflective glass, trying to smother his emotions just like he had back in the dorm room. Strange, the certainty I felt that pinning him was the right thing to do — I was sure it would look wrong to anyone else but he wasn't afraid of getting _punished_ , he was afraid of getting _angry_. So now that my grip was tight and he wasn't responsible for keeping himself in check, his muscles shook and his emotions started to slip free of his control. He pulled hard against me, and I didn't let him budge either of us.

"You don't got to follow his rules anymore, Jim. You don't have to pretend nothing happened, that you've got no call to be boiling under your skin. An' I think maybe you _want_ to tell somebody, but we _got_ to get you past this terror first."

A noise came out of his throat: a groan, a growl.

I tucked my chin over his shoulder, pressed my cheek against his ear and throat. He tested my embrace with another hard jerk, inhaled sharp and deep a couple of times, like one of those pre-warp soldiers nerving himself to lunge out of a muddy trench. It took him a couple tries to finally force the words out through his teeth.

"I — I never — gave a shit, about th-the beatings he threatened me with, if I told."

Tense shivers ran through the body beneath mine; his white fists were drawn so tight I was sure his nails were digging little crescents into the heels of his palms.

"But — I — it would, I would drive people away. I would — destroy. All of us. Everything."

I exhaled, heart aching.

"That's hard, feelin' responsible for keepin' everything together. Only you were a kid. If tellin' tore everything apart, would have been the doing of the person beating on you. Not your fault."

"But — I couldn't. I — she — we. Needed." His breathing had to hurt, the way the air was tearing in and out of his throat. Terrified, then and now, of exchanging the evil that _was_ for the evil that _might be_. "There'd be nothing left."

"You would have been left alone."

A violent shudder rolled through him.

"Don't — leave me. Don't — let me go." The words came out gruff and strained, like he was afraid just asking might make me vanish.

"I'm right here, darlin'," I said, hooking my leg over his, trying to tug him over on his back. "You're safe."

He surprised me a little, fighting against my pull, but now he'd started he didn't seem to know how to stop — he had spent his whole damn _life_ fighting but he needed the security of being held and I had the strength to hold him. I wrestled him flat, straddled his waist and pinned his wrists to the bed near his shoulders; he growled and resisted and tried to arch up under me. Had the damn tiger by the tail, and the only choice I had was to hold on — for both our lives.

"'S all right, Jim — dammit, you're allowed to _feel_."

" _Fuck!_ " He shouted at the ceiling, straining every muscle, trying to buck me off, to move, to lash out. Then he let his spine fall back against the bed; panting from the exertion, staring up at my face. God only knows what he saw in _my_ eyes — but little by little I saw the haunted fury in his make room for a shaky resolve.

 _Never give up._ So goddamned strong.

I had Jim as close to immobile as I could manage, was breathing heavy and hard. He tilted his head back, squeezing his eyes shut.

"My — stepfather. Was a fucked-up bastard."

"Tell me."

He made another incoherent noise, rolling his head on the pillow, struggling to make his lips move.

"He. Hurt me. Hit me."

The words were not very loud. Not very clear. But they resounded with brittle defiance in that quiet room.

"He teach you to use the regenerator, too?" Didn't really try to keep the snarl out of my voice.

"After—" another spasm wracked him. "I got scared what it would do to me, if he was really out of it. He was — a paramedic. And a sloppy fucking drunk."

"Was it just him an' you?"

"And Mom. And S-Sam. My brother. But he didn't — not when they were home."

"Only you? Never Sam?"

"I...I earned it more," he said, so strangled I could barely hear the words. "At first. But Sam... couldn't take it. Couldn't hide it. I made Frank leave him alone."

"Jesus Christ, Jim. Wasn't your job to protect Sam. Was Frank's job to control his temper."

I shifted, releasing one wrist, thinking to stroke his hair, but his eyes flew open, dark with panic. I sighed, shook my head, and re-captured his fist.

"Sorry. Sorry. I've got you."

He shook his head, despair writ in every line of his face.

I licked my lips, fighting back a flutter in the pit of my stomach, and asked "Would this be any easier if we... tied you down, instead of relyin' on me keepin' you pinned?"

We searched each other's wide eyes, and I didn't know which of us was shaking harder. He finally nodded, slowly.

"Okay. I'm goin' to let go of you, all right? Just for a tick." I kept as much of my weight on him as I could, reached over the edge of the bed, flushing a little at my own foresight. His eyes traced the chunky leather cuffs I pulled from their hiding place, but he lost track of his questions when I started wrapping and buckling one purposefully around his wrist. I wondered if his heart was pounding as hard as mine. He didn't fight, though his muscles were taut as ever when I'd fastened both wrist cuffs and clipped them to the headboard with the sturdy straps.

I shifted down his body, keeping contact the whole time, and tugged him down so I could cuff his ankles to the center of the footboard; not giving him a lot of room to pull, but trying to make sure he wasn't going to end up too uncomfortable, either. Jim's wide eyes never left me, his whole body trembling from some mix of feelings I doubted either of us could identify. I slid a finger under the lining to double-check the fit of the ankle cuffs against his malleolus, before curling up against his side. He laid still while I tugged the blanket up over our legs, settled my cheek against the pectoral muscle that curved toward his armpit, and stretched one arm across his belly, careful not to settle right on any of the shallow scabs.

He pulled, tentatively at first, and then yanked _hard_ — but the straps were strong, the cuffs spread the tension evenly, and the bed was built like a tank. There was no way he could break free until I let him loose. I kept hoping I was right, that this was what he needed, but when he settled from testing his limits, his body felt looser, calmer.

I waited for him to take a few more deep breaths.

"How old were you when Frank joined the family?" I asked.

He swallowed, making the warm muscles shift under my cheek.

"F-five? When she started bringing him home. But he didn't seem — he wasn't —" His chest lifted as he tilted his face up toward the ceiling; he pivoted his wrists, hooking one exploratory finger over a taut tether. "He... he drank a lot, but so did she, they would come home together drunk and shining with smiles, and we... we would just hide, so she wouldn't see me, so she wouldn't stop laughing."

I stroked my hand over his side.

"He was, almost, nice, most of the time, he made her happy then. And he'd talk to me, you know, let me follow him around. I was almost seven, when they married? But she got a job at the shipyard and he stopped working for the parameds, and I started school and was too weird for the other kids and way too fucking smart for everything and—" he stopped.

"Whatever changed, Jim, it wasn't your fault. No matter what was going on in his head, you didn't trigger it."

"He just — he'd get — the drinking, and trying to get us to behave, and do our part, and not make her crazy... He was, it got, bad, he — he h-hurt me so many times, and fixed it up after, and, and, he told me never to tell, never tell—!"

He struggled to speak, in a voice thin and young; to fight off something that wasn't physical and hadn't been in years. I pushed up on my elbow, looked into his white face — tormented eyes focused on another time, another place. The darkness seemed to press heavily around our bed.

"His rules don't apply here. Go on."

"I can't—" He arched up, face twisting with shame. "I can't, I can't Bones, I can't do this...."

"You can, Jim. Nothing terrible'll happen now. I'm here." I waited, mind racing, reminding myself that I was here to _listen_ , not to try to _fix_. "Whatever you tell me, I'm not going to break. I'm not going to _leave_ you."

"It wasn't just him, Bones. He was rotten and weak and screwed-up but he was, he did — we had this _thing_ , this understanding, about this dance we did, and...fuck, there aren't any words, we never talked about it, and no, it was never about sex — it was just... He'd build up to these explosions and I'd — I'd — it was what I was there for, you know? To gather it up, to take it in, to calm it down. I, we, I, we both, we'd fight and snarl but we'd, I'd, we'd feel _better_ after and I _know_ that's fucked up but...but it's what we were."

"A family?"

"No. _No._ " He shook his head vehemently; I could practically hear his teeth grinding with the emotions he was still trying to swallow back. "We were _never_ a family."

  


σ


	20. On the Brink

#### Kirk

Bones shifted the elbow he was leaning on, moved up my body just a little to tangle his fingers in my hair, his thumb stroking gently over the throbbing vein in my temple.

"Seems to me you're saying that despite everything, Frank's the only one you could depend on. Don't sound like your mom was around much, and Sam wasn't much help. The only person who ever took _care_ of you is the one who hurt you. Only makes sense you'd hate Frank some and love him some."

I snarled, wanting to tell him he was wrong, but I had no idea what to call the black tornado I felt inside when I thought of Frank.

"I can't do _either._ "

"You were a kid, Jim. You needed him even if he wasn't protecting you from hisself like he should've." His eyes glinted. "And, what, your mom worked long hours at the yard, wasn't home often enough to guess? Or too out of it when she _was_ home?"

"She...." Bitter hollowness dried my throat, made my voice tight and small. "She was... she never wanted to be there. At home. In Iowa. On Earth."

His thumb stilled. "An' you think that's on your shoulders, too."

"I was — some days I couldn't — everything I did, or said, even if I did nothing at all — Sam and I always made her think of our dad. And some days that was...not good."

I couldn't remember a time when I wasn't watching my mother's every reaction, trying to figure out how to make things better instead of worse. I couldn't remember ever going to her for comfort.

"Was she angry with you?"

"I don't know." I closed my eyes, chased away sense-memories of her faraway voice, the sight of her boots from under the kitchen table. "I never knew."

"Not your fault she couldn't get over his death, Jim." His voice was heavy, weary.

"She was good at pretending. For everyone else. But she was... dead inside. A heart full of empty space, and stars, and dust." I rolled my face against my arm, needing to avoid his gaze even with my eyes closed. "She tried to drown it when we were little, but quit drinking after she started working on engines at the yard, lost whatever it was she had in common with Frank. Tried to _act_ like a mom for a while but I knew it wasn't real."

"So she gave up trying an' went back out to space when you were still small, then?"

The involuntary jerks against the tethers had stopped; my muscles were stiff and taut, fists still clenched. I struggled to pace the ragged breathing through my nose, still pressed up against my upper arm.

"I was eight," I said, voice gone wooden and flat. "Sam was eleven."

"You must've been pretty pissed."

"No point."

"Well, wouldn't have done much good, I'll give you that. Hurt, then, here," he tapped a finger on my chest, "an' real as anything Frank did to you then took away."

His fingertips lifted to the corner of my mouth.

"Jim," Bones said, firmly. "Stop."

I looked up at him, released the lip I'd caught hard in my teeth without realizing it, tasted slick salt blood. I pushed the tip of my tongue against the ragged spot inside my lip, the spot that had been torn so many times the memories riffled over each other like shuffled cards, indistinguishable except for one: hiding in a dark, stifling closet, and my mother's voice, answering Admiral Nogura on the computer.

_We're talking about five years, Winona....what about your family?_

_My sons... my sons will be better off with Frank than they ever have been with me._

A dusty old memory, so long avoided that the associated despair had become dull and listless — but now it was back, fresh and biting like a knife to the heart.

"I know it hurts. Some _real_ pain doesn't break the skin, darlin'."

"She thought it was _better_."

"She didn't understand," he sighed. "So that's your mom leaving you. What happened to Sam?"

He blindsided me with it — I felt myself go pale, limbs twitching against the restraints with the urge to curl up, curl away from him. Same time the old masks tried to slam down, the old lies and evasions that blockaded the quarantined memories. Couldn't go there, not even for Bones.

"He died," I croaked.

"How?" he asked softly, insistently, like a teacher who already knew the answer.

"Overdose."

"Wasn't an accident, was it," he asked, but again, wasn't really asking. Still, he waited for me to nod. "So something happened, something too big for him to handle, and he ran off where you couldn't follow."

Bitter chills ran through me, that hollowness howling behind the locked doors of my mind. My eyes were unfocused, unseeing.

_Alone. Always fucking alone._

"Hey, hey. Jim. _Jim_." His hands, firm on both sides of my face, his weight heavy against my body.

_Don't run, don't go, don't leave me here..._

"Sam may have left you, but _I'm right here_."

I blinked repeatedly, staring up into his eyes, green and gold, intense and scared and real. Pouring so much into me that I didn't deserve.

"That's right, Jim. I'm sorry about Sam."

Bones could be sorry. I had no right.

"It was my fault."

He flinched.

"No, it wasn't. _No_ , Jim. Sam killing himself wasn't your fault any more than your mom leavin' was."

And the doors broke open.

"You don't know!" I jerked hard against the straps, sending jarring pain through my joints, wrenched my face away from his touch.

"I _do_ know." He paused, took a couple of shaky, uneven breaths, hands on the bed above my shoulders. "We're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but Sam's death was his own fault. Not Frank's, not your mom's, and _definitely_ not yours."

"He was gonna get out of there, he always said he was gonna get out of there, he'd stripped his room bare, he was _gone_ and I was _alone_ and I drove the car off the fucking cliff and he thought he had to come _back_. Stupid, STUPID fuck, he should never have come back!"

"You drove—" His voice choked in shock, strained with anger. "You didn't _make_ him come back."

"But he didn't know!" I shouted. "I lied to him, for _years_ , I lied to him, I let him think it had stopped when Mom left, I'd made Frank let him go, let him run, because he couldn't take it and I could, and he came back too soon after Frank blew up over the car and I hadn't fixed it all yet and he knew I'd been lying all along..."

"But even though he knew, then, instead of stepping in he _left you_. May have been one lie after the other in that house but you — he—" he caught his breath, caught his temper, spoke in a voice I'd never heard before, shaking like thunder. Pinched eyes glittered like broken green glass. "You didn't put a gun to his head, or shoot him so full of morphine his body forgot how to breathe. Sam _chose_. He _chose_ to kill himself, he _chose_ to leave you behind, and it wasn't _about you_. It was about _Sam_."

"He couldn't take what he saw, the blood, the pain..." I said thickly, strangling on the memory of Sam's horrified, haunted eyes, on that day in the silent, dusty farmhouse. Of him recognizing what the regenerator meant, realizing how often he'd run off and left me alone with Frank, comprehending in one crushing moment all of the lies and all of my reasons for them.

"What he did after he saw wasn't your responsibility."

"I didn't stop him. He ran, and I didn't go after him." Not until it was much too late.

_Sam's room, stripped clean, empty except for the cold body on the bare mattress._

"It wasn't your job to go after him."

"Sam is _dead!_ The truth about me killed him!"

"Yes, Sam is dead. And the _truth_ is, blaming yourself for damage _you_ didn't cause isn't goin' to bring him back. Beating yourself up every time you get the tiniest taste of something good isn't. Going. To. Bring. Him. Back. Nothin' will, not ever. But the _truth_ didn't kill him. _You_ didn't kill him. Only one person responsible for Sam's death, and that's Sam."

"No. _No!_ " Sam had been fragile and fucked up, and I hadn't protected him enough, that's the way it had always been. Vertigo twisted my brain and bowels, I couldn't catch my breath.

"Yes. Your mom left you, and then Sam left you, and whether they knew it or not they were leaving you alone in a world of hurt. An' that's _real_ , Jim."

I whipped my head back and forth, trying to reject his words, trying to fight free, trying to escape the whirlwind of emotion inside me. They'd done what they had to do, they'd...

Suppressed fury shook me with terrifying force. _I'd_ done what I had to do, I'd felt like I was twisted and wrong from the beginning but I'd always _tried_ to do the right thing, and it hadn't mattered, it _never_ mattered. Every bitter thing I'd swallowed, so I could make up for my birth, so Frank would stay, so she would have someone, so Sam would have a chance to be okay ( _so I wouldn't be left alone_ ) — they'd thrown it all away, none of it had meant a _fucking_ thing.

  


#### McCoy

Jim tried to gasp in a deep breath, chest heaving with the fury that had slipped its leash at last, eyes bright and wild. His fists clenched and unclenched in no particular rhythm. He yanked down hard on his wrists, _wanting_ to bruise, to find a way to hurt himself, to shove the anger back into its box — the pain was an old friend and a familiar crutch to help him do it. The force of his emotions set my heart galloping and chilled my marrow not because I was worried what he might do if he got loose, but because of how _much_ he was trying to swallow back down.

I'd never been able to figure his state of mind on the night he'd been tied to the fence; had to be the same wildness I was seeing now, while he thrashed and fought and grunted, a sheen of sweat on his skin. Even then it hadn't looked like just a sexual kink to me — arousal and the floating high came with the pain and endorphins, but I'd gotten a confusing glimpse of the _rage_ Jim struggled with every day. He had so much goddamn control, hid so damn much behind his bright smile...

And here was this raw creature looking through a child's eyes, filled with fear at having his hard-built model of _how the world works_ smashed. I knew how he felt, was reeling myself. I hoped he remembered the safe word, that he knew on some level that he had a way _out_ if this got to be too much.

"My fault..." he insisted, weakly. His body lifted and arched; I made soothing noises, rested my hand on his breastbone beneath one of yesterday's cuts. But I didn't try to push him back on the bed, didn't stop him trying to fight.

"No, darlin'. You're blaming yourself because that hurts less than believing all this happened for no reason. An' you turn all the rage back on yourself, because otherwise you have to point it at people you love."

He jerked so violently it made me cringe — another miserable bull's eye for Leonard McCoy.

"I'm _not like him!_ " Jim's voice was somewhere between a snarl and a wail, caught between a denial and a plea; he sounded more like the frightened kid who'd never gotten to say these things than the adult trying to deal with them.

Sam had died at fifteen. Jim had been all of _twelve_...

"I know. I know," I said, reaching out to stop the tossing of his head with a gentle hand on his cheek. "Bein' _angry_ wasn't his problem, Jim, gettin' angry won't make you a monster. You don't have it in you to treat anybody the way Frank treated you. I know s'why you think it's only okay if _you_ get hurt, why you stop fighting when it looks like you might win. But the world isn't black and white; you don't always have to follow only the extremes you know. Sometimes you've got options you don't yet know how to see."

His eyes were dark and tormented, twisting my heartbeat out of rhythm; I ached to help him escape the magnetic archetypes of angel-hero-martyr or devil-monster-villain. But all I could do was watch him shake. I hadn't expected any tears, didn't expect Jim had cried much at all since he was small. He was still bucking against his bonds, but with less force; even his endless energy had to run out sometime.

"I never thought," he started, his words choppy and frantic. "I never wanted — I didn't think, there was anything else, for me..."

"Maybe back then it felt like those options were only there for other people — but it wasn't true then, and it's not true now. You can do anything you want."

And of course too many options was just as scary as too few; he fell silent and another storm of shudders chased through him. I stroked my thumb over his cheek, letting him ride it out. Waiting with a knot in my throat for speech to come back to him, to see if he maybe couldn't reach that uncanny calm I'd seen in him after he'd gotten someone else to take a belt to his back, after he'd broken his own thumb to let just a little bit of the rage and fear out in a way he felt was safe. Because it was okay to take chances with his own life and limbs, but not to put anyone else at risk. I had a momentary shudder of my own — he'd driven a car off a _cliff_? _Why_? But those questions could wait. Had to wait.

"I want...." And he floundered, facing a blank too big to fill in, even if having a universe of possibilities in front of him drew his attention back from the past, pointed him towards the future. "Pike wanted me, and then you wanted me, and... I just can't...screw this up, I can't go back to that empty life..."

I let my hand against his chest remind him that I was here, that I wasn't going anywhere. Felt the fight slowly, _finally_ starting to bleed away. Tremors still running through him, like aftershocks following a big quake, but starting to rest just a little bit easier. The silence got softer, more soothing as his breathing calmed.

"Tell me the rest?" I asked, gently as I could.

His lips pursed briefly, but he didn't resist this time; just let the remainder of the story go.

"Mom came back for Sam's funeral. Frank beat the shit out me to remind me not to tell her anything, hoping she would stay. So I shut the fuck down and was a cold and distant little bastard to her, and Frank begging apparently wasn't much of an incentive either, and she'd lost another piece of George, and...probably thought it was her fault, too..." he paused, eyes widening, and I'd have bet my last credit he'd never considered the effects of Sam's death on his mom before. He shook himself, took another deep breath.

"She shipped out again and hasn't been back since, and Frank began working in earnest on drinking himself to death." He blinked; his larynx bobbed, and I traced my fingers along his lower lip again to stop him chewing. "I guess maybe Sam left enough guilt for all of us."

I nodded, swallowing hard. Pop had been as desperate to escape his pain as Sam, but he hadn't even had the decency to do the deed himself — _suicide is a sin, boy_ — so he'd left me with the double-barreled guilt of failing to find a cure, and letting him convince me to push the morphine ever since. And it wasn't until I'd started railing about Sam's selfish choice that I'd realized how unwilling I'd been to lay any small part of the blame where the bulk of it belonged: on _Pop's_ shoulders.

Yeah, I had agency, and yeah, I'd done the deed, but he'd worn at me like windblown sand over a stone until I was too exhausted to say _no_ anymore.

Jim raised his eyebrows, and I gave him a twist of the lips that was far more grimace than smile.

"There's guilt in every family, Jim."

I needed to tell him, I realized — all of it; Pop, Gran, Jocelyn, Joanna, the whole shebang. Not tonight, not while he was still struggling with his own resurrected ghosts, but before we went back to the Academy. And much as the idea put a knot in my throat, I owed him the honesty and more — I could hardly pretend _my_ story would be any harder to share than his had been. I stroked his hair back.

"So Sam was gone, your mom was gone, Frank was there but doing his damnedest not to be..." I shook my head; Jim'd had so little to start with, and the tattered shell of his family had fallen apart and blown away like cinders, just as he was reaching the years where he had to figure out where he fit into the world.

He closed his eyes, the skin around them pinched and pale.

"Frank didn't — he didn't really go after me, after she left, unless I pushed him, and...and I did sometimes. When he wouldn't get out of bed. When he wouldn't talk for days. When things were going too well at school." His face contorted again, probably caught by the ugly conviction he _deserved_ what he'd gotten because he'd ended up asking for it. Never seeing he'd been going back to the only person who'd ever taken _care_ of him; not only trying to return the favor, but begging for whatever contact he could get, the only form of _normal_ he still had.

"But by then I was getting in fights at school, too — before I tested out, anyway — and then later...other kinds of trouble, at bars and stuff. No one expected any different."

Felt another hot flare of anger in my gut at the thought of people writing him off as a troublemaker, reinforcing the idea that somehow he _was_ just getting what was coming to him. And somewhere in there, alone with his pain, he'd _reinvented_ it, mixing in kink and debauchery and another layer of certainty that he was twisted and wrong. The fury dimmed under a sudden chill — what would have happened if Captain Pike hadn't looked beyond Jim's troubled surface, if he hadn't somehow coaxed Jim into the Academy and given him a chance to find his feet?

Only one more mine I needed to sweep for now, hoping against hope that the answer was not so traumatic. "What happened to Frank?"

He didn't shake or flinch this time, just sighed wearily. "He got too sick to take care of. I emancipated myself, got access to my dad's weregeld, put him in the best hospice I could find. As far as I know he's still there."

Must have been a difficult decision; Pop had at least spared Gran and I having to make that call. I wondered how old Jim had been, how long he'd rattled around Riverside by himself before Pike had stumbled on him. I kept my arm along his belly, my hand flat along the curve of his ribs, sometimes still, sometimes rubbing gently. Waited, while our breathing settled, then shifted up onto my elbow again, so we could see each other better. There was something a little strange, stunned, in his eyes, like he didn't quite believe he survived the storm.

"How're you doing?"

I saw weary humor in the lift of his brows.

"How the fuck am I supposed to answer that, Bones?" The desperate, wounded child was gone, the sardonic adult back in his place, and I felt some small part of the tension slip from my own spine.

"Honestly? Maybe even without profanity?" Trying to make him laugh a little.

"Im-possi-fucking-bull." He responded in kind, though doubt and uncertainty were still tangled in the easy words, that deeply ingrained fear that me seeing past _normal_ was going to get him left again.

I caressed his cheek, smiled affectionately as I could, wondering what the heart in my throat was doing to the expression on my face. He watched my eyes as if his life depended on what he saw there.

"Thank you," I said, and watched confusion shift his eyes through sky to stormy sea and back again. "'Shitty childhood' doesn't begin to touch the Hell you went through, Jim, and I wish to God I could reach back in time and put it right. But I'm glad you shared it with me, because we can _face_ things together even if we can't fix them."

I _really_ owed Jocelyn that apology.

He took a breath that hitched halfway through, took an even deeper one, fully expanding his ribcage. When he exhaled, his whole body settled heavier into the sheets, like the quality of the earth's gravity had changed for him. He wasn't calm, exactly — what I saw in him certainly wasn't anything like peace — but it was something.

Maybe I'd finally convinced him I wasn't going to leave.

I ran my fingertips across one of the shallow scabbed wounds on his chest, mouth dry.

"This... Jim, yesterday was about all this old pain coming to the surface again. Death and fear and guilt and abandonment. Things you've felt you had to hide from everyone, even yourself."

He nodded, wary and bemused.

"What if we found a way to.... _unhide_ the pain? Make it _real_ again?" My voice trembled, and I'd gone tense, in some ways worse than before. Both Pop and Joce were loud in the back of my head about the stupidity, the _recklessness_ of this idea, and God _damn_ if I wasn't bad as Jim about following old worthless rules.

His brows pulled together; he didn't bother to voice the question.

"These...." I trailed off, fingertips resting on his breastbone, trying to find away to put this in words. "These will heal on their own, and they're shallow enough not to leave a trace. I won't fix them, because I can't. They're part of the cycle of damage-and-mending you've lived over and over, and I don't want to be part of that pattern."

I swept a finger across the scar on his eyebrow, the one I'd fretted over being unable to fix that very first night in the cab, wondering now how the injury had managed to last long enough to leave its mark.

"But what if I gave you a—" I couldn't help the hitch, the catch in my voice, couldn't help stumbling over the word, "a scar. A talisman. Something real and permanent and forever, marked on your skin where you can see and touch it."

Probably could have lit a match off the heat in my cheeks; some admixture of fear and guilt and emotions I didn't think we even had names for, in Standard anyway, and still the bone-deep certainty this was _right_.

  


σ


	21. Deciding to Live

#### Kirk

I stared at Bones in disbelief. My body didn't know how to interpret the adrenaline spike. Fear: fight or flight, a sick sinking feeling of unexpected betrayal. Excitement: want, need, deserve, _bad doctor_ , a bitter consummation. And hope, desperate hope: the assurance in his eyes said he had a reason, a plan.

"It's just an idea, Jim, an' I know it's 'bout half a bubble off plumb." He looked pale, worried, but determined. "I won't, unless you want. I'm not 'bout to force anything on you."

"How?" I whispered.

He licked his lips, nervous, his eyes flicking to the nightstand.

"Got the sharpest knife I could find from the kitchen," he rasped out. "Rather have a scalpel, but...got to work with the tools to hand. Other than that, I'm pretty sure you know how a scar's made."

"You'd...cut me. Hurt me." The spill of golden light around us seemed bigger, brighter — my pupils had to be dilating wide. There was a question in there somewhere, about how this fit with not laying hands on me but...we both knew he wasn't talking about punishment. Or sex, for that matter, no matter how kinky the setup looked, no matter how hard the blood rushed through my veins.

He nodded, slowly, holding my gaze.

"Can't change your past, Jim. And you're the only one who can shape your future. But right here, right now what we _can_ do is close the gap between what's real and what's not. No more double life, no more hiding from the past. No more fake 'boy cadet'. No more smotherin' your more unusual desires until they tear through your skin."

Bones shifted till he was sitting upright, ran his fingers through my hair.

"Just Jim, living the life he got instead of the one he should have had."

I gazed into the flustered gold-flecked green of his eyes, tried to see myself _through_ his eyes — to envision the man he thought I could be. The outlines of that life were terrifying in their vagueness; I had no idea what life would feel like without the itch, the veil, the loneliness. Not that a talisman would be enough to just wipe all those things away, but...that's not what he was offering. Just...making it real. Making the invisible visible. Taking every fucking thing my family had ever erased or ignored and giving it _back_ — in a way that wouldn't cripple me, cripple my future, hurt the people around me.

And now that he'd proposed it, the idea blazed in my mind like a neutron star.

I blinked back the thrill of apprehension, realized he was waiting for an answer.

"Yes," I hissed softly. "I want it."

Shapes tumbled through my vision — an X, a name, a sun, a sketchy starship? On my arm, my back, my chest? Bones didn't ask if I was sure, just leaned up along my side, retrieved a small first aid kit from the drawer of the nightstand. Ready, waiting, just like the cuffs; he'd thought this through, planned ahead. "You — already have an idea, don't you?"

"Yeah." He sighed, traced an angular shape across my ribs. "Was thinking maybe a sigma might suit."

I frowned, envisioning the Greek letter, the spiky symbol of summation: something like an "E" with attitude.

"You are the sum of everything that's happened to you — well, more than the sum — but this scar will always be there to remind you that the hard parts really happened. It will never be erased. You're the sum of the pain you've lived and the pain you've overcome, and we have the rest of our lives to keep reinventing what that means."

My breath caught in a throat suddenly gone tight, the blazing idea taking on dimension and form — and I had no clue how to respond to the enormity, the depth of it. Instead, brittle laughter rose out of nowhere. "Shit, you've really been thinking hard about this..."

He tried to give me a dirty look and failed.

" _Yes_. Most of the afternoon, in fact, since the fool idea occurred to me and I failed to talk myself out of offerin'. Stop laughin', Jim, or you're going to give me a damn complex."

He glared, not _really_ annoyed, but I sobered anyway. He was struggling with this, of course he was; we had to be so far out of his comfort zone it wasn't funny.

A shocking, wondrous thing, that Bones could even think of this — for so long I'd been convinced that his acerbic-but-gentle nature and his doctor's oath meant he could never understand or approve of the ways pain and I intertwined. But he _understood_ , he really did.

"It's a good idea, Bones — it is. I think it will help. So where should we put it?"

He shook his head. "That one's up to you. Under the uniform seems smart, but there's a lot of leeway for personal expression in 'Fleet rules. Which is how we'll keep anyone else from erasing it, by the way — put a note on your file about spiritual significance or some such."

I nodded, tremors of excitement running through me, mind flicking through possibilities and scenarios: of needing to touch it, of others seeing it, of needing to answer questions, or not answer them.

"How about...my hip? Upper thigh? Thereabouts?" I pushed my chin in the approximate direction. I wanted it right where I could touch it, right where we would both see it in the future.

He tugged the blanket down, set his fingers carefully against my skin, on the long smooth muscle below the crease at the top of my thigh. "About here? Or more over this way?"

I hesitated, licking my lips, until he touched the spot I imagined, almost straight down from the point of my hipbone. "There."

"The tensor fasciae latae," he said, fingers pressing and probing for a good spot. "A good choice, long as it's low enough down — femoral artery's over here..."

He looked back up at me, medical detachment slipping away again. "An' I know you did fairly well keeping still for the piercing, but I'm not going to be able to hold your hand this time."

"I'm thinking these will be enough," I said, tugging lightly on the tethers.

"Hope so," he answered, reaching down to lift my hip, tuck a towel flat beneath my thigh before pulling open an antiseptic wipe. "You've already given them a workout."

I sighed heavily, took in another deep breath, suffering the same strange exhilaration I'd felt in Lensaa's chair. His touch was far gentler, less businesslike, but just as deliberate as hers had been. He swabbed at my leg, cleaning the area, and the disinfectant was just as cold. He turned to the side, used another two wipes to thoroughly clean his hands, then two more to wipe down the tools — the _knife_ — in the shallow box that lay open on the sheet.

I fidgeted, until the startling crack of my knuckles sounded through the quiet room and brought his gaze back up to my face; I grinned sheepishly, feeling the heat on my skin, the inevitable arousal. How did I look to him, trussed and supine, helpless and eager all at once? My doctor was there, in the assured touch and the careful preparations, but this was _Bones_ , too — the flush on his cheeks, the nervous tongue that flicked at his lips. We were both breathing faster, had to be feeling the same euphoric panic of adrenaline.

I felt a sudden dizzy sense of connection, a folding of our past and future over this shared sensation that could, would, _had to be_ enough to banish the itch. My smile faded as I struggled to absorb the impact: we'd reached this heightened state before, with the piercing, were sharing it now, would again in some other way — less fucking fraught, maybe, but no less intense. _The rest of our lives_ , he'd said. Not just a talisman. A promise. The weight of that shared future was too stunning to put into words: I could only stare at the brilliant gold that flared into the green around his wide pupils.

"Jim?" he said, voice unsteady with confusion and concern; wasn't surprised that he probed for the safe word. "How are we on time? Need an out?"

"Oh...." I breathed. "The time is definitely _in_."

He lifted the small sharp blade, which trembled in the warm light as if it were made of flame. My cock twitched selfishly, primed by anxiety and anticipation, but sex was only the smallest part of the sensations that overwhelmed me. Pleasure tingled through me but it was subsumed in things more nebulous and unfamiliar, things that sent even more waves of fright crashing through my body... Hope. Belonging. _Trust._

Bones' eyes were dark and focused on mine, the worried crease back between his eyebrows, but at the same time his jaw was set firmly, more sure than I'd ever seen him, in the other dark intimacies I'd led him into. This act was inescapable now, and it would make no sense to anyone but us — this very wrong thing he was going to do to me was absolutely right.

I hitched myself tighter, pivoting my wrists to wrap my palms around the the tethers. I used the leverage to pull my legs taut against the ankle cuffs, keep my body still as possible even as my tension ratcheted higher. Not entirely comfortable, but that hardly bothered me — and I wouldn't have to hold it for long.

I took several deep, oxygenating breaths, nodded at him.

He nodded back, slowly, reached down and pressed on my leg just above my knee, helping stabilize me.

The blade touched my skin lightly, held until my involuntary quiver had passed — and then drew a line of fire across my thigh. My jaw clenched, muffling the cry that hid in my throat. Pain and pleasure thundered through my system as the knife went deep into my skin, way down into the depths of my psyche.

" _George,_ " Bones murmured.

My throat clamped tight, stopping the breath in my lungs. A silent explosion — imagined but never seen — flared across my vision, physically connected to the searing wound in my skin, the tendrils of blood flowing down my hip into the rough towel.

_Sweetheart, listen to me, I'm not going to be there...._

The disembodied voice: the father that never was, that might have been, the root of the cascade of _wrong_ in my life. One evil spawned by another, all the way back to that terrible black ship and the man who never came back from it.

A gasping sob shook the held breath out again, and I gripped the straps tighter, vision blurring. Felt the sting of the knife tip against the endpoint of the cut, couldn't look down but knew the first diagonal slash was next — not George, Captain, Dad, he was only the beginning and I knew, then, what Bones intended, what the sigma meant.

" _Winona,_ " I growled, closing my eyes. As soon as her name left my lips, Bones made the next cut; shorter, but just as deep. Not a narrow jet of flame on my skin this time — pulsing pain spread from the white-hot center at my hip, licked at leg and groin and belly. Arousal continued to jangle through me, like unheeded alarms, but the noises that fought their way up from my chest had nothing to do with sex.

_I'm dead inside and the older they get the more they know it, the more it affects them._

_Sam struggles all the time at school and Jimmy... Jimmy... he deserves something better than I can give him. Frank has promised to take care of them while I'm away._

The mother who hadn't been, who'd tried too late, who'd been blinded and weakened by her own inadequate emptiness. A gravity well I couldn't approach, and couldn't escape; I was forever trapped in the echoes of her ever-increasing red shift.

Blood welled and escaped from the second cut, draining away like every bit of emotion I'd ever tried to sustain for her, and the pain flickered and leapt in her absence.

"Okay?" Bones asked, softly, the tip of the blade resting again at the beginning of the next segment.

My chin jerked down — we couldn't stop this now. Harsh whimpers made it almost impossible to speak but I held my lip in my teeth until the sharper pain helped me open my eyes again. I stared up at the ceiling; I wouldn't give up, wouldn't run away from this — I let my lip go, pulled my body tighter, and struggled toward the name I didn't want to say.

"Sss..." I huffed, around gritted teeth, and the sibilant was enough to start Bones slicing downward again, straight and sure — slower this time, creating a clean point where the diagonals came together, pouring incendiary fuel onto the agony. I held myself rigid until the knife lifted, and then my body twisted inside a bonfire of all-consuming pain.

" _Sam!_ " I shouted through the blaze, sick and blind with fury. " _Sam_...."

We should have been allies, Sam and I, we should have fought together, or run together, or stood shoulder to shoulder and demanded better from the universe. But my idiot brother had expected life to be _fair_ , and fair didn't include exchanging a proud father and a happy mother for a desperately squalling baby.

A brother only in bitterness, useless genius memory clinging to the smiling family he'd waved off into space at the age of three, always bewildered that things never went back to _normal_. And always on the retreat, up to his room, out to the barn, off to school, always plotting his next escape. Resentful of the apparent truce between Frank and I. Broken by the beatings I couldn't spare him and finally destroyed by the ones I had. So much _fucking_ waste.

_He ran off where you couldn't follow._

"You goddamn son of a _bitch!_ " I raged at the ceiling, at the bare mattress, at the black hole in my mind. I'd been cold as a comet the day of his funeral, I'd been circling in the outer darkness ever since but now I was burning, blazing, ten years of guilt and dread vaporizing — I hadn't helped him, I hadn't saved him, why, oh why, hadn't he just kept on going? Ten years of punishing myself, wanting, needing, deserving — and thinking my choices had to be as irrevocable as his. Fucking, _fucking_ waste....

The need to lie still had gotten lost, somewhere, in the firestorm that whipped through me hotter and wilder like it would never end. I thrashed against the hard bonds on my limbs and the gentle hand on my stomach, at the mercy of the feelings I'd compressed into that box tighter and tighter until I was afraid to so much as glance its way. Possessed, helpless, out of control — but tied, held, safe — and little by little all that stored energy consumed itself. I collapsed back with a groan and a shudder.

"Almost there, Jim." Bones' voice shook; he reached down to pin my leg above my knee again, settling the knife back against my skin. "One more."

I gasped for breath, depleted, out of defenses. My skin flinched involuntarily from the knife point and sent more weak "run away" signals to my brain, but I'd been corrupting the flight impulse all my life and without help from the rest of my body, the urge was transmuted into another flush of heightened awareness. I felt our raspy breathing, the only sound in a box of golden light floating in kilometers of empty night. I tasted the pressure of the cuffs on my wrists and ankles, entirely separate from the embrace of leather gone slick with my sweat. And Bones — I recognized his face, every vivid plane and crease and blemish clear and open as the blueprints of the universe.

My body stilled, every taut fiber of strained muscle flooded with spreading wonder. The pain and the past still swirled around me but his eyes, his eyes were full of something that — that I _could_ name, finally.

"Finish it," I said, and he looked down to focus on the last stroke, careful and intent, a rumpled halo of reflected light shining in his hair.

My skin parted easily, and the pain was as deep and resonant as ever, adding layers to the curtains of flame around me and yet — I lay quiet and calm and spoke the final name.

" _Frank_."

I saw my stepfather standing in the farmhouse kitchen with a towel tucked into his belt for a makeshift apron, scraping salty-rich scrambled eggs and diced potatoes out of a skillet onto a plate. His hands — broad, stubby, strong — were the center of my world, then. Always doing or making. Almost always holding a glass or a bottle. The first place the tremors of anger would show. The last thing to go still when I watched to be sure he was really asleep.

Distantly, I heard the faint tap of the knife being dropped back in the kit, looked up into brown-green-gold eyes overflowing with emotion. I breathed in, out. Bones' hands — fine, gentle, strong — lifted to my face, thumbs smoothing away wetness I hadn't felt from the fragile skin beneath my eyes, down my temples. His hands drew back, reaching and unwrapping, pressing a layer of gauze against the jagged wound, soaking up the shed blood. Then he wiped his long fingers clean again.

I saw Frank's fists, his hard knuckles: the center of fear when I was a child, the dread that grew with every step I got closer to home from the bus, or that yanked me out of sleep to atone for the day's wrongs. But Frank's palms and fingers had been soft and nimble, moving the regenerator deftly over my skin as I rested on his lap, limp and tired and bruised and bloody, hearing the murmur of his voice through his warm chest without really listening to the words.

The inferno was gone. My thigh burned, a nest of hot embers on my skin, still sending the occasional needle-sharp spark of pleasure through my exhausted nerves, but the overwhelming pain and the obliterating rage seemed to have burned each other out for now. And I was still here, sane and (mostly) intact and — not alone. Bones carefully bandaged the wound, gaze drifting between my leg and my face.

When I was very small, I'd thought that _aftermath_ had something to do with numbers. After geometry, trigonometry; after trig, calculus, and after all that math....? Something even more esoteric or transcendent? But it had since become an even stranger word for me. Fear and pain were always with me, but sometimes... sometimes the aftermath was worth it.

 

#### McCoy

I'd never been one to give in to the shakes after surgery, no matter how long or hard or upsetting. And I didn't shake now, dressing the wound, in the aftermath of walking right past my own boundaries into the depths of Jim's hidden world. The harrowing journey had brought us to the right destination; he floated in a tranquil haze, focused inward on memory or grace or just the ease granted by someone else finally seeing into his dark strange places without bolting.

Still, little caterpillars of worry gnawed at my stomach, hoping to mature into moths or something nastier — this symbolic gesture wasn't even the beginning of a remedy for his ills, wouldn't help if he didn't cooperate by seeking real treatment.

I taped down gauze over the butterfly strips — yes, we wanted it to scar, and open air would be fine tomorrow, but tonight, we'd guard it from infection and wandering fingers. Then I shifted down the bed and unclipped the strap that held his ankles, and bent his knees up to ease circulation. I tenderly took one foot in my lap, unwrapped the cuff, and stroked my thumbs up the center of his sole, massaging and checking for blood flow.

Jim moaned softly, coming back to the world; I bit my lip and looked at his face again but he twisted his ankle against the pins and needles of returning sensation: physical pain, not emotional. I switched to rubbing the other foot, then shifted up the bed and unbuckled the cuff from one of his wrists, pausing to plant a kiss on his palm before placing my thumbs at the center of the heel of his hand and rubbing firmly upward so his fingers curled down around mine. There was some chafing at his wrist but nothing that would leave a mark in the morning; kissed the band of pink skin, too, then set his arm down across his chest and finished untying him. He was lax and easy under my hands, but watched everything I was doing through almost-alert half-lidded eyes.

I spent some time cleaning down the side of Jim's thigh, then tugged the towel from underneath him and balled it up with the rest of the trash. I dropped the bundle over the foot of the bed — cleanup could wait till morning — heaved a deep sigh, and reached out and smoothed down the sweat-soaked spikes of his hair.

"Pretty sure I already know the answer to this one, but do you want something for pain?"

"No," he said quietly, then paused, considering. "Not right now, anyway."

"Okay. How's your bladder?"

"My — my what?" He laughed, startled, cheeks crinkling beneath eyes clear and blue; I grinned back at him.

"You've been laying there for a while," I said with a shrug, "so I figure you're going to need some help getting up. Thought I should check before we settle in."

"I'm good, Bones." He shifted gingerly over onto his side and yawned fit to crack his jaw; I folded the first aid kit closed, set it on the nightstand, shut the lights off, and curled up around him; pressed my forehead to his bicep. Felt like I should be apologizing, but I was pretty sure Jim didn't want me to, wouldn't understand why _I_ wanted to. So I held him until he was snoring softly in my arms, and followed him down into the velvet darkness.

I woke to morning light faint through the opaque sheen on the window and Jim wrapped tight around my back — somehow reversed who held who during the night. He breathed soft and even, limbs still heavy with sleep. I could feel the gauze on his thigh against my backside and felt a stab of fear that last night had all been wrong somehow, that I'd only made the damage worse. Or that he was going to take the talisman to mean we could manage on our own. Even without complications, though, any sort of mistakes or misunderstandings about what we'd done together, I would have been bit overwhelmed by what he'd told me about his past, what he'd unintentionally taught me about myself.

"S'early, Bones," Jim complained in my ear. "Stop thinking so hard."

I chuckled ruefully, felt his lips curl against my back.

"Can't." Turned my head a little, trying to look at him; he let me shift over in his arms without letting go, slid warm hands up my back. "And before you suggest sex as a way to shut my brain down, I have some bad news for both of us. No strenuous activity for a couple of days."

I rested my hand around the curve of his thigh, heel of my palm just touching the edge of the gauze. He pouted, but his clear blue eyes said his heart wasn't really in the protest.

"You sure I can't give you something for pain?"

"Stop worrying."

"Can't do that either." I snorted. "I fuss like a broody hen, I always have. Especially when I've performed impromptu surgery on someone with a paring knife."

"So you've done this before?" My heart thumped a little harder, seeing that wicked, utterly unconvincing bright-eyed smile he'd given me before inviting me to smack him on the shuttle. I leaned in, intending to kiss the tip of his nose, not in the least surprised when my lips landed squarely on his instead.

"Infant." I nipped lightly at his lower lip when I pulled away.

"Grumpy old man."

The door chime interrupted my grimace, and I pressed my face into Jim's shoulder and groaned, guessing it was later than I'd thought. Had to be the rest of the groceries and possibly the clothing order he'd placed yesterday; I fumbled out of bed, shouted "hold on", kicked the bloody towel out of sight, found my jeans and pulled them on. Jim pulled the blanket up just enough to be decent, then lay in the bed, watching me help Antonio bring things in and put them away.

I started making breakfast, and didn't push Jim to talk or move; gave him some time to come to terms with whatever it was about me cooking pancakes that kept him spellbound, lying there with his head cushioned on his elbow.

I heard him sit up, finally.

"Bones?"

"Hm?"

"What do I need to do? To start fixing this?"

I carefully turned the last of the pancakes over, listened to them sizzle. "You've made a start, Jim. You just need to ask for help."

I turned to look at him; he perched, a little askew, on the edge of the bed, forearms clasping a pillow protectively against chest and belly.

"I'm here for you, always," I said. "Thing is, whoever helps you sort this out is going to need distance I don't have. We're going to need to find someone we trust — I'm thinking someone like Lieutenant Chapel, who knows both psych and Starfleet — and ask what our options are."

He swallowed, anxious lines trying to mar the determination on his pale features.

"You're still here. The universe has done a number on you, but you've come up with some pretty creative coping mechanisms, you're strong and you want to be helped." I had to turn back to the griddle; could smell the pancakes starting to singe. I lifted them off onto the plate, turned off the heat, looked back at him. "Everything you're dealing with is _treatable_ , Jim. Managing some of it may take medical intervention — to help you let some of that intensity go so's you can have ordinary happiness, not just the opiate calm you feel after you've been bashed around. But some can be done by just _talking_ about how profoundly _fucked up_ your life has been. You're a miracle of adaptation and survival, Jim, but your world is _different_ now."

He licked his lips, watching me carry the plate to the table, then set the pillow aside. He stood slowly, keeping his weight off the injured leg while he figured out how much moving it was going to hurt.

"And you think I can...be some kind of normal. Get through this, become an officer, without faking everything."

"Honestly? I think you're one of those folks who can do any damn thing you set your mind to, though I'm sure it's going to take a fair amount of work." I shrugged, holding his gaze. "And we all make our own normal, anyway. Come get breakfast."

He moved toward the table with only a mild limp; I raised an eyebrow and then we grinned at each other, considering and discarding the idea of pants for him at the same moment — though Gran would have had a _fit_ about me being shirtless at the table. Couldn't imagine what she'd have done if I'd ever dared sit down to a meal without a stitch on. Jim filled his plate quickly, drawn to the warm aromas even though difficult thoughts continued to pull his brows together.

He chewed and savored thoughtfully, and I couldn't help wondering at how _ordinary_ this felt. The demons that had screamed in the night were still there, the deaths and divorces that haunted us both, but Jim was just a young man eating pancakes in the bright morning light. Broad hands wielding tame silverware, imperfect skin sporting even scruffier stubble, his breathtaking quicksilver smile appearing when he glanced up from his plate and caught me watching him.

"Any damn thing, Bones?" A twinkle of mischief, like sunlight on the water.

 _Anything,_ I heard, colored this time by trust and desire. Tilted my head at him, asking, and he let a bit of the uncertainty lurking underneath slip out where I could see it.

"Pike thinks I belong in Command track."

I reached out and took his hand.

"And he also thinks your father would be proud of you." He flinched, but I held on, twined our fingers together. "Tell you something. I don't know who or what Pike sees when he looks at you, but honest to God, I think he's trying to do right by you, not push you somewhere you don't want to go."

 _You need to go easier on yourself, Leonard McCoy. Take some time to figure out what_ you _want, and then do it for_ you _._

I gave him a crooked smile. "He believes in you. So do I. But we're not the ones who matter, not when it comes to figuring out who you want to be."

σ


	22. Rising Up (and Epilogue)

#### Kirk

The great thing about Bones was that he always seemed to know when to shut up. Good at saying the right words, and then giving me space to consider them. Thoughts bright and dark gnawed at me throughout the day, each daunting in their own ways, but for now he let my mind find room for them without interference; allowed me to sleep and play computer games, to lean against his side and talk endlessly about nothing, to get him to roll his eyes by teasing him about needing a knife to keep my libido in check.

If I lingered in the bathroom that afternoon, if I peeled off the gauze and stared long and hard at the raw sigma that would be part of me forever, if I slowly traced the healing scabs of my desperate cry for help until I could finally look myself in the eye in the mirror -- well, he didn't seem to mind.

We spent the next couple of quiet days mostly house-bound, though we did take advantage of the balcony most afternoons, curled up together on the big cushioned lounge chair, soaking up the winter sun. Bones tried to be all stern and doctory, but I was sure my inquisitive hands and imploring mouth convinced him to give in to my wheedling for sex well before he intended to -- even if he did treat me like some impossibly fragile flower at first.

I expected him to get twitchy after a few days with no plans, no work to do, and a week and a half or so left to do all that nothing in. But it didn't feel empty; it was time we needed to start hunting for the right balance between our needs. We talked a little more, in vague terms, about the shape of our families, but most of our chit chat was about discovering each other. He started teaching me to cook; I started filling in the gaps in his knowledge about music. Turned out we'd read a lot of the same books, and that neither of us was big on sports, except he still followed the Rebels' scores for sentimental reasons -- and once we got on the subject of college I had to tease him mercilessly about starting his academic career as a _philosophy_ major, of all things. Told him it explained completely why he was such a grim and grumpy soul.

My alma mater, I told him, was Jack Daniels University.

Which made his lips get all serious and twisty, until I mentioned the Princeton distance learning thing that had gotten Pike all hot and bothered. Bones threw a pillow at my head, not quite laughing.

My thigh mended quick enough, almost too quick; Bones had to do some stretching and irritating of the jagged scab to ensure that the skin wouldn't just heal up clean. As I got more mobile we followed the path down to the little lake, learned we could loop around the whole thing in a couple of hours -- but of course we took our time about it, the day we tried. The countryside was mostly dry and golden-brown, the drowsy color of California winter, but we rambled on and off the path, exploring inlets and silty banks, rabbit warrens and dead trees, cow wallows and thickets of reeds as high as my head. Bones found a gorgeous grassy spot under a willow tree for a picnic lunch and a lazy afternoon fuck; I tried talking him into going for a swim in the snowmelt-cold water, but he swore it wouldn't be sanitary for my healing wound.

That night, lying together in the dark, we swapped stories of how we'd ended up on that damn shuttle. I told him about Pike's dare in the bar, about choosing to accept even though I was certain there was no way in hell I was cut out for command. How Pike's simple faith in my ability to do something _better_ had ripped a hole in the pointless bloody life I'd woven for myself, made it intolerable to go back to that empty farmhouse. How rotten his gift of Scotch had made me feel, when I knew it was made in honor of the man I'd never be; and how I'd had no intention of ever drinking it, until that night I'd wanted to drink with _Bones_ , and leapt to the conclusion that he'd never drink anything as low-class as tequila.

Bones pressed his cheek tight against mine when I told him how finding the forgotten bottle with its fucking beribboned medallion in his room had been one blow too many after Ernie'd stripped me bare.

He was silent for a long while, and then he started talking about himself. About his Pop's monofilament tongue, the critical judgment he'd lived with every day of his life. About his wife Jocelyn, and the shattering miscarriage that had ended his baby girl Joanna. Haltingly at first, Bones spoke about his father's endless debilitating illness, and his increasingly bitter demands to have his suffering ended. Bones had finally given in -- and the cure was discovered only three months later. But his heartbroken Gran had long since cut off contact with her "murdering grandson" by then. He might have wept a little in the telling, there in the dark; I didn't try to confirm it, just kept my arms strong and quiet around him while I listened.

It was sobering, to recognize that Bones was just as good at hiding his pain as I was, to know that he'd had so much of it to hide.

The afternoon of the last day before we had to head back, Bones was drowsing on the balcony when I settled onto his lap, calves bracketing his thighs, and leaned in for a kiss.

"You're heavy, and you're blocking my sun," he groused when I settled back, making no move to shove me off. He rested his hands on my hips and ran his thumb along the crease of my jeans, right over the nearly-healed mark on my thigh. I shivered, then looked up into the cloudy sky.

"What sun?"

"Well, what little of it there is, you're blocking. What's on your mind, darlin', other than the obvious?"

I shrugged.

"I sent a comm to Lieutenant Chapel today," I said, looking down, dropping my hand to cover his atop the scar.

"Yeah?"

"Asked her if I could still get in on Pike's course."

"Jim?"

I licked the corner of my mouth, nervous. "Can't hurt to try, right? Might surprise myself?"

"Knowing you? You'll probably surprise everybody." He watched me close, his patient eyes squinting a little against the light, then cleared his throat hesitantly. "Been thinking I need to talk to her myself, see what needs to change if I want to pursue a shipboard posting instead of something in research."

My head snapped up. "You'd do that?"

"For you I will."

My heart pounded; I squeezed his hand. For once in my life, I was absolutely sure of what I wanted, what I needed, what I deserved. And getting it right was the only thing that mattered.

σ

* * *

.

#### Epilogue

When it was over, I told Chapel, the Corvette was beyond repair.

A week after Sam's funeral, we'd gone out to the quarry together. Mother, stepfather, the tow guys, her favorite mechanic; they'd all stared solemnly at the shattered carcass, and my mom had started to cry. I'd stood by with my arms folded, leaning silently against the sheer quarry wall.

They'd used a crowbar to get into the glove compartment, let her retrieve a few things she never showed me. They'd given her the license plates. And they'd loaded the car onto a flatbed hover, hauled it out of the quarry and off to a salvage yard.

Over the next few weeks, I'd watched on my padd as part after part appeared in the yard's inventory. They'd sold it off piecemeal: small, relatively intact bits to other collectors, and broken pieces to replication mills to assay and measure and reproduce. The larger mangled chunks were sold for good money, the rare and pricey remnants of a long-gone manufacturing culture: the steel, the rubber, the safety glass -- unsalvageable, irreparable, never to be a Corvette again.

But valuable still, reclaimed and recycled and reforged into something new.

Σ

.

**Author's Note:**

> Reactions of all varieties warmly welcomed, including constructive criticism -- feedback stokes our creative engines!
> 
> For related ficlets, see:
> 
> * [Something Better](http://archiveofourown.org/works/131076) (young Jimmy)  
> * [Runaway](http://archiveofourown.org/works/131076) (Sam)  
> * [Whittled Away](http://archiveofourown.org/works/131076) (Winona)  
> * Something Special (Frank, coming soon)


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